The parent post did say "to a level of quality that far surpasses the demands of regular popular music". Not a very high bar, and certainly not as high as you're setting.
Of course you can pirate ringtones. Take any MP3 from a website (look in my sig for one download site- also, note who runs it), trim it down, and load it into the phone. Bam, ringtone. For Japanese phones this is slightly different due to their insistence on a non-standard ringtone format. Download, convert to WAV, convert to MMF, trim, and download. Also "bam, ringtone". They pay more because they can't be arsed to do it themselves, not because there's no chance to.
Hmmm. I got a Japanese DS and played fan-translations (a pirate is me, I know) because I read numerous reports on Chinese forums about that. Naturally Wikipedia is inaccessable for me so someone else'll have to edit the entry.
I installed Mac OS on my Toughbook to get away from various Windows XP issues (and with only 512MB, like heck I'd install Vista). Great experience except for the lack of wireless, but I'm plugged in most of the time anyway, and can boot back into WinXP if I absolutely have to use wireless. If I was in the US, then what I did would probably be illegal or at least in violation of EULA, but I'm in China. None of that bothers me.
Actually, I found out that they've made it available in mainland China (marketed as for the DS, but really the same thing over again). Probably this was more due to desperation, as their official Chinese game line-up consists of less than 10 games- and a significant portion of that is Nintendogs with SM64DS, WarioWare, Yoshi Touch and Go, and... no, I think that's it. Naturally most DS sales in China rely on flashcarts coupled with fan-translations of popular foreign games. Right now, all 4 Ace Attorney games (PW 1,2,3 + Apollo Justice) have been translated, as have a bunch of others that i can't name (I know Harvest Moon has been translated too).
Ture, it should be. But, I've been accused of deliberately trying to pull the cartridge apart (why would I do such a thing?) when trying to do that warranty replacement. Then again, I live in China- I get punished for buying a genuine game, whereas the small independent vendors were all too happy to help get me up and running with my SuperCard on my DS Lite (they pre-loaded a Japanese-Korean-English dictionary, a program for learning Chinese, and a copy of Apollo Justice- best game in the Ace Attorney series so far).
Oh. Well, I suppose I was talking out my rear then- I only play Japan-region Wii games on my Japanese Wii- the mod is something I use for my American Gamecube games (which work without issues).
I don't really care so much about discs breaking, I care about perfectly good games not working simply because of an arbitrary decision not to allow games bought in Japan to play in consoles from the US (Wii). So far, none of the anti-modchip people have adressed that.
I don't think you adressed the issue he was talking about, though. Doesn't matter how sturdy the disc is if it's region-locked to Japan and he wants to play on an American Wii. And no, buying another Wii is not an acceptable solution.
Yep- I use DSOrganize and MoonShell on mine. Makes a decently priced MP3 player. I am guilty of pirating games too, though- mainly because I live in China and the DSes are region-locked to only play Chinese games (of which there are less than 10) due to some idiotic decision. But, they left the GBA slot completely unprotected, because the GBA game library consists mainly of fan-translated games flashed onto blank cartridges and sold commercially; from big department stores to small street vendors, none of them are official.
How? Once the game is loaded into the card's RAM, for all the DS knows it's just a regular DS game card. There's no other way for those to work (not sure about the ones that used to run from the GBA slot, though, but we're talking about the R4).
There are some accidents you just can't prevent, such as those caused by drunkenness, but I think reinstating Prohibition is a bit much. That, and no amount of grounding your kid for destroying a disk will bring it back.
Or, you know, people who use modchips to play legit games that won't run due to idiotic region-lock (Euro players buying US games, for instance- because you honestly aren't going to get one Wii for every region, are you?).
...The Japanese make it look so easy. Zero-fatality record, always on time, stuff like that. Oh well, it's always the same- a vision looks perfect until you hit the big roadblocks. On the last topic- I thought there were already trains running through the Rockies.
With the new delays and associated mess with air travel, we just need a high-speed West Coast link and a high-speed East-coast link with a cross-country link, so that the backbone is shaped like an H (or like a car's gear shift positions- another link connecting Michigan/Wisconsin/Illinois to Texas) with slower rail connections branching out from there, like Japan does. This will take people cross-country in an equivalent amount of time. Also, this way, existing infrastructure can be used too (connected to the high-speed backbone to service smaller towns and cities).
Doesn't that use DeCSS? Is that legal? I've heard varying things about it- including that I'm pretty much in the same category as the torrenters if I use it. In that case, why not D/L the torrent instead? Saves battery, for one. And you can highly doubt me as much as you like- I won't go there.
Yeah... now Japan is the country to look to for punctuality and good public transport. And boy do they do it well (if America had its own Shinkansen, I bet demand for DC-Boston or DC-NYC flights would drop to near-zero, same for the West Coast SF-LA).
Slashdot Mirror
The parent post did say "to a level of quality that far surpasses the demands of regular popular music". Not a very high bar, and certainly not as high as you're setting.
Of course you can pirate ringtones. Take any MP3 from a website (look in my sig for one download site- also, note who runs it), trim it down, and load it into the phone. Bam, ringtone. For Japanese phones this is slightly different due to their insistence on a non-standard ringtone format. Download, convert to WAV, convert to MMF, trim, and download. Also "bam, ringtone". They pay more because they can't be arsed to do it themselves, not because there's no chance to.
Fool. Their media player never got sold outside Japan/China.
I don't believe I said "for great gaming" but I'm not going to go there. But, if someone wants to run a gaming server, is that not public?
Hmmm. I got a Japanese DS and played fan-translations (a pirate is me, I know) because I read numerous reports on Chinese forums about that. Naturally Wikipedia is inaccessable for me so someone else'll have to edit the entry.
"I see no conflict."
Are the concepts of "explicitly not allowing any form of server to be run" and "running a server for gaming" not *mutually exclusive*?
I installed Mac OS on my Toughbook to get away from various Windows XP issues (and with only 512MB, like heck I'd install Vista). Great experience except for the lack of wireless, but I'm plugged in most of the time anyway, and can boot back into WinXP if I absolutely have to use wireless. If I was in the US, then what I did would probably be illegal or at least in violation of EULA, but I'm in China. None of that bothers me.
Actually, I found out that they've made it available in mainland China (marketed as for the DS, but really the same thing over again). Probably this was more due to desperation, as their official Chinese game line-up consists of less than 10 games- and a significant portion of that is Nintendogs with SM64DS, WarioWare, Yoshi Touch and Go, and... no, I think that's it. Naturally most DS sales in China rely on flashcarts coupled with fan-translations of popular foreign games. Right now, all 4 Ace Attorney games (PW 1,2,3 + Apollo Justice) have been translated, as have a bunch of others that i can't name (I know Harvest Moon has been translated too).
Ture, it should be. But, I've been accused of deliberately trying to pull the cartridge apart (why would I do such a thing?) when trying to do that warranty replacement. Then again, I live in China- I get punished for buying a genuine game, whereas the small independent vendors were all too happy to help get me up and running with my SuperCard on my DS Lite (they pre-loaded a Japanese-Korean-English dictionary, a program for learning Chinese, and a copy of Apollo Justice- best game in the Ace Attorney series so far).
Oh. Well, I suppose I was talking out my rear then- I only play Japan-region Wii games on my Japanese Wii- the mod is something I use for my American Gamecube games (which work without issues).
BTW- I think PD stands for Public Domain, correct?
I don't really care so much about discs breaking, I care about perfectly good games not working simply because of an arbitrary decision not to allow games bought in Japan to play in consoles from the US (Wii). So far, none of the anti-modchip people have adressed that.
I don't think you adressed the issue he was talking about, though. Doesn't matter how sturdy the disc is if it's region-locked to Japan and he wants to play on an American Wii. And no, buying another Wii is not an acceptable solution.
I think that my cartridge falling apart due to faulty construction counts, but apparently it doesn't happen enough to be significant.
In Japan, they do- it's called the Play-Yan. Strange that they don't try to sell it outside Japan.
Yep- I use DSOrganize and MoonShell on mine. Makes a decently priced MP3 player. I am guilty of pirating games too, though- mainly because I live in China and the DSes are region-locked to only play Chinese games (of which there are less than 10) due to some idiotic decision. But, they left the GBA slot completely unprotected, because the GBA game library consists mainly of fan-translated games flashed onto blank cartridges and sold commercially; from big department stores to small street vendors, none of them are official.
They haven't done such a thing so far, thank goodness. The latest firmware works fine with modded Wiis.
How? Once the game is loaded into the card's RAM, for all the DS knows it's just a regular DS game card. There's no other way for those to work (not sure about the ones that used to run from the GBA slot, though, but we're talking about the R4).
There are some accidents you just can't prevent, such as those caused by drunkenness, but I think reinstating Prohibition is a bit much. That, and no amount of grounding your kid for destroying a disk will bring it back.
This is just HK. They haven't touched the mainland yet, which is, as we know, the manufacturing center for damn near everything.
Or, you know, people who use modchips to play legit games that won't run due to idiotic region-lock (Euro players buying US games, for instance- because you honestly aren't going to get one Wii for every region, are you?).
...The Japanese make it look so easy. Zero-fatality record, always on time, stuff like that. Oh well, it's always the same- a vision looks perfect until you hit the big roadblocks. On the last topic- I thought there were already trains running through the Rockies.
With the new delays and associated mess with air travel, we just need a high-speed West Coast link and a high-speed East-coast link with a cross-country link, so that the backbone is shaped like an H (or like a car's gear shift positions- another link connecting Michigan/Wisconsin/Illinois to Texas) with slower rail connections branching out from there, like Japan does. This will take people cross-country in an equivalent amount of time. Also, this way, existing infrastructure can be used too (connected to the high-speed backbone to service smaller towns and cities).
Doesn't that use DeCSS? Is that legal? I've heard varying things about it- including that I'm pretty much in the same category as the torrenters if I use it. In that case, why not D/L the torrent instead? Saves battery, for one. And you can highly doubt me as much as you like- I won't go there.
Yeah... now Japan is the country to look to for punctuality and good public transport. And boy do they do it well (if America had its own Shinkansen, I bet demand for DC-Boston or DC-NYC flights would drop to near-zero, same for the West Coast SF-LA).