peteer01

Inadvertently or not, the work he's done can be used to advance piracy. I don't think anyone has ever disagreed with that point. People were already playing pirated PS3 games at that point, but even if they weren't, the law of unintended consequences means it's pretty easy to inadvertently advance a lot of things. Why are we specifically upset with GeoHot for something he didn't directly do? That's how it currently stands, but as we all know laws are re-interpreted all the time. The court will decide how it works. Actually, laws are very rarely re-interpreted, and the verdicts of existing legal cases are used all the time to determine rulings. If this case does go to a final verdict, I'm almost certain it will be a landmark decision, regardless of who wins. To quote The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: So, the outcome of this case will almost certainly "furnish the rule" for future cases involving people who tinker with their own consoles in the future.

Not a stupid question, especially since the answer might surprise you...No, even if he hacked the system himself and used it for entirely legal reasons, there would still be a problem. That that is illegal is actually why I quoted the article above. One of the points in Sony's case is that he did hack his own system. (Dean, I'm not sure exactly what you were answering...but reading through the groklaw details on this case, it certainly sounds like Sony's legal council believes that if you agree to the Terms of Use and then violate those ToU by hacking your system yourself for entirely legal uses...you're still in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which means you've committed a felony. Ridiculous, I know, but that's why I think GeoHot needs support from people who don't fully agree with him, because the alternative is agreeing with draconian rules that are so anti-consumer it's scary.) No one's going to disagree with that. Hacking ruins the online experience. Piracy hurts everyone from GameStop to developers to publishers to console makers. There's a lot of people adversely affected by piracy, and hacking...as in the kind of online cheating that ruins other people's play experience...that's something I'd certainly like to avoid. But GeoHot isn't on COD right now on someone's PS3 playing a pirated copy of the game killing people with his flash grenades and spawning them into one hit napalm... I think we all agree that piracy and hacking are absolutely bad for the gaming community and bad for the companies that make their money as part of the gaming ecosystem. But what about the legitimate uses that unsigned code could have? If I could get a PS3 that ran a media extender program that could stream files from my NAS and support a very wide range for audio and video file types, along with playing Blu-ray discs, that alone would probably have been enough for me to have bought a PS3 instead of an HD media extender from WD last year. There are legitimate uses, there are positive benefits, to being able to run your own code on the console you've already bought.

That's the problem with analogies. We're talking about consoles, so is "modifying your gun" a mod chip (illegal in some places) or software...I'll stop using the analogy to make any further points. For hardware...I can understand a mod chip being illegal. For software, the idea that someone can be sued for writing their own code for their own system...sounds a bit too 1984/Brave-New-World to me. As for the fact that this is a civil suit, Ethan already answered that point. - - - - - I thought it might be interesting for some of you that the one claim from the class action lawsuit against Sony for removing Other OS that has survived SCEA's motion to dismiss is the one alleging that SCEA violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act That's pretty ironic, because it means that both Sony and George Hotz are facing claims of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The issue with Sony's case against George Hotz is that they're using the CFAA to accuse GeoHot of hacking his own system. http://volokh.com/2011/01/13/todays-award-for-the-lawyer-who-has-advocated-the-silliest-theory-of-the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act/ Another analogy, but this one isn't mine.

Welcome, welcome! Glad to see a familiar name.

Pretty sure I got that right, so here's mine... "Hey, this is the company's posters, and the company won't like this!" "How would you like to get a ticket next week? You got any romance in you?" "Sure, I had it, but I got rid of it." "Liver pills. Who wants to see liver pills on their honeymoon?" "What we want is romantic places, beautiful places, places George wants to go." "Hey, Bert. Here he comes." "Come on, we gotta get this up. He's coming." "Who?" "The groom, idiot. This is their honeymoon. Come on. Get that ladder." "What are they, ducks? More if necessary. Edit: More. If even more is necessary, I'll oblige.

Nothing But Trouble?

Anyone here have any experience with the 360 version of the game? I'm interested, but I'm wondering if the multiplayer has any local only search options or way of checking your ping in game. BFBC2 was pretty much unplayable more often than not with most hosts being in the UK or US...

Gah. I went digging through the old TAY and the old Kotaku massacre posts trying to find the "After Today, Stars Have No Meaning" image...or something along those lines. Thought it would be appropriate. Was a bit sad to see the "This Is Kotaku" article talking about how important commenters are were.

I agree that the gym can be great, but I don't think there's only one solution. The vast majority of people around me who I'd say are in great physical shape don't have a gym membership. They might engage in physical activities of some form or another (like riding a bike for pleasure), but most of them just eat very well and live a pedestrian oriented lifestyle. I do agree that the gym can have a very big, and positive, impact on your weight, body composition and energy level, among other things...but there are other options.

I have some ancient Japanese secrets. Or, at least, secrets my Japanese wife has grown up with that make so much sense that some of them are worth sharing. The simplest one is this: Don't eat after 10:00PM. Period. That's it. That simple. I like it because it falls into the "So easy, even I can do it!" category of advice. If you're out drinking, you can still drink, but don't eat after 10:00PM. If you're not out drinking, just don't eat or drink anything with calories after 10:00PM. (She's got some other rules and guidelines, which help explain how she's able to eat as much as me and be consistently underweight according to her BMI) Now, that said, I definitely can throw myself in with the rest of the group in saying that I want to lose a bit of weight. Winter always makes me a bit more sedentary, and I haven't been the best at not snacking lately... That said, winter is wrapping up, and for better or for worse, that big bag of Valentine's Day Peanut M&M in my fridge is going to be gone in the next few weeks at the latest, so hopefully less chocolate and warmer weather will push the scale back in the right direction.

Yes, it does. Look, in criminal law (not that I'm saying he's a criminal, but bear with me), you still get punished for certain offenses even if you "didn't intend" for anything to happen. He's not causing people to pirate games. Following your example, wouldn't a gun manufacturer (or someone who shared the information on how to make gunpowder) be punished for gun related deaths? Actually, the court will determine if what GeoHot did is legally allowed or not...and as you said, the law could stand to be less draconian. That's exactly why supporting GeoHot's legal battle, even if you don't care for the guy, is a good thing for consumers rights. I very much disagree. Wouldn't it be great to have a Sega CD, Saturn, 3DO and/or Dreamcast emulator on your PS3? A homebrew program that allowed you to stick your existing discs into your PS3 and play them on the PS3 using an emulator? Maybe even a PS2 emulator could have been cobbled together by the homebrew community. I game in a projector room, and the only PCs that are ever in there are a laptop or iMac mini that simply isn't as powerful as I'd like. I use TVersity on my 360, and I love that functionality...homebrew, whether it's emulators, allowing your console to connect to a NAS filled with your media collection, programming your own games or playing other peoples games (XNA and Indie games cover this on the 360)...there are lot of reasons to want to write or use programs on a PS3 instead of a PC. I'm not going to put a PC in my projector/gaming room. I'd love more functionality out of any consoles that are in there. I disagree. If people had real access to the PS3, you'd see PS3s being used as HD media extenders, MAME boxes, and multiple other uses. This additional functionality would be provided by the homebrew community if Sony's hypervisor limitations weren't in place. Funny how you ignored that next sentence of mine. I said, if you actually used it it's your right to bitch, but everyone else can fuck off. You missed my point. My point is that because I'm often in that "tiny, tiny fraction" of people who are affected, I wish more people would realize my plights and help rectify them. If more people actually cared and complained when I'm treated unfairly, I wouldn't find myself dealing with nearly as many issues. That's why I commiserate with the people who miss the functionality. I deal with a bunch of legal and logistical hoops from both governments (Japan and America), would you say that I need to stop being a vocal minority when I speak out about that? Would you say that people who haven't been in my situation first hand should "fuck off if it doesn't affect you" when they try to help me improve the system? As I said above, the situation, as it stands now, is that Sony's legal action will set legal precedence regardless of the verdict, if the trial goes to a verdict. I don't think it's possible to blow that aspect of the situation out of proportion. I have, and I don't agree with a lot of the points they make. Not because I disagree with their content, but because I disagree that they make several points that are highly subjective and passing them off as if they were objective. Such as their "justification for piracy" bit, in which they don a gavel and begin to proclaim when it's right to pirate. I'm sorry, but who are they again to make these proclamations? They're obviously allowed to have an opinion, but I don't appreciate it when people pass it off as fact. The bit with the PS3 homebrew was just pandering to their audience. Their "Don't mess with the Linux users, they're badass mothafuckas!!!" was pretty transparent. I agree with their opinion that if there's a "tiny, tiny fraction" of PS3 owners that you don't want to galvanize into regaining lost functionality, it's people who are installing Linux onto their console. I thought they made this point quickly and humorously. Considering their time constraints, how would you have gotten across the message?

RockyRan, think about what you're saying. You're saying, "It doesn't matter what his intent is, this can be used in some way to make piracy easier," and implying that that alone condemns his work. Did you try Other OS? A friend of mine bought a PS3 at launch specifically because Other OS and Blu-ray were enough for him to justify his purchase...except that Other OS was extremely gimped, and didn't allow access to much of the PS3's power nor hardware. If people could have properly dabbled in homebrew with Other OS using all the PS3's processing power, your argument would hold more water. Comments like this piss me off. I'm an American living in Japan and I'm used to being part of the tiny, tiny fraction of people that put up with BS because I'm in that tiny, tiny fraction. US immigration wants to interrogate my family because we're married but my Japanese wife isn't a US citizen and doesn't have a green card? Don't worry, I'm only a tiny, tiny fraction of the people. Microsoft and Sony are geofencing potentially objectionably content? Don't worry, me and the other people affected are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the people. If you want to talk about the relevancy of the removal of Other OS, whether or not a large or small group was affected isn't the point. The point is that people did buy a PS3 because of Other OS, and that functionality was taken away. Other OS was never a legitimate platform for homebrew. People wanted to tinker with the PS3's...not be limited by some hypervisor like they were with Other OS. In my original post, I was lamenting the fact that too many people seem to be of the, "Meh, this doesn't directly affect me, so I don't care about it." People aren't "blowing this situation out of proportion", this situation is going to set legal precedent. If you want to hate Geohot, go ahead, but I recommend you at least read what he has to say first. From geohot.com: That's only a short snippet, and I think the page is worth your time. If you didn't know before I started my post, you probably already know by now...but the PS3 only had access to 6 of the 7 SPEs and had a hypervisor restricting access to the RSX. So yes, there were reasons to hack the console for homebrew. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy If you haven't already seen the Extra Credit's video on Piracy, I recommend that. I like what they have to say about the PS3 from the 2:15 mark.

For me, I immediately think of the stuff I grew up on: ColecoVision, NES, Genesys, Gameboy, LCD Game-N-Watch, that kinda stuff. That stuff's all classic, but to a degree, so is the PS1 stuff. The difference in two terms, "retro" and "classic", in my mind is game mechanics. Retro would be anything from back when developers (pretty much) only thought in 2D falls, or anything that feels like the game mechanics came straight from those games, a good example is a platformer like Scott Pilgrim , people are going to identify that kind of game experience as retro. (Most of Shadow Complex is very retro) For classic, the N64/PS1 stuff is classic 3D gaming, but an HD version of 3D game from that time would only feel retro if you knew it was an HD version of an old game...otherwise you might just think it's a bad game. So a retro game would be something based around old school (pre-PS1/N64) game mechanics, while a classic would be any game that's more than, say, 15 years old...

This is kinda-sorta related...was MasterDex's account at Kotaku really banned way back in June 2008? Is there another MasterDex account? I'm trying to figure out if it's been over a two-and-a-half years since he posted at Kotaku regularly, or if there's a second MasterDex account at Kotaku. (some random question, I know...maybe MasterDex'll see this?) P.S. Yeah, they did stop updating the ca.kotaku site. I'm sure the few things worth me reading'll get posted here by someone else.

I think there's a big difference between PC piracy and console piracy, and maybe it was mentioned pages ago...maybe not...but I think it bears repeating. I have pirated on my PC. If piracy was murder, it would fall under some form of manslaugher. It wasn't premediated. I have not pirated on a console since the Dreamcast, which was stupidly easy to pirate on. My point is that there is a difference in the mentality that can lead to piracy on a PC, and the mentality you need to pirate on a console. I downloaded a demo for some photo editing software. I liked it. The timed demo expired, but the software was pricey, and there'd been an online coupon that'd recently expired, and I figured that if I could get another demo window, there was a good chance there'd be another deal, and I could get the software for 20% off, or whatever the deal I'd missed was. (The software is DxO Optics Pro, for those who are curious) I tried uninstalling and then reinstalling it after registering for another demo using a different e-mail address. It didn't work. I tried scrubbing it from my registry, and then reinstalling it. I tried Googling for a way to get the demo to run again, and found a program that was supposed to crack the demo so that you could use it indefinitely. Now, if that had worked, I never would have bought it. I did end up buying it, and while I don't remember exactly what I paid, it was at least $150. I wasn't trying to pirate it, I was just unwilling to pull the trigger on buying it at full price because of a google search for coupons/special offers turning up a deal that I'd missed out on. Another good example is downloading a game to see if it runs on your PC correctly. I am sure people have done this with the best intentions at heart. You install it, it runs, and you figure you'll try it out a bit, and tell yourself you'll buy it if it's any good. 20 hours later... The console parallels are free demos, trial versions of downloadable games, and renting games. You don't get a mod chip or look into running pirated software on a 360 or PS3 because you aren't sure how a game will run or because you can't rent... Most people can rent and if it's made for the console you own, you know it's going to run the way it's supposed to. Anyway, I'm probably not being as coherent as I'd like...but the big difference is that I think a lot of people who pirate on consoles are bound and determined to pirate if they can. I don't think that's nearly as true for piracy on the PC.

http://www.techspot.com/news/42495-geohot-asks-for-donations-to-fight-sonys-ps3-hacking-lawsuit.html (continued at the link above) Personally, I hope he gets all the help he needs. I'm pretty anti-piracy, but there's a difference between telling people it's illegal to create and distribute code to jailbreak a PS3 (especially when jailbreaking an iPhone was deemed legal) and piracy. I also liked his offer to settle, "I want the settlement terms to include OtherOS on all PS3s and an apology on the PlayStation blog for ever removing it. It'd be good PR for Sony too, lord knows they could use it." We'll see what happens, but it's amazing how many people are anti-GeoHot because his code can be misused to allow people to cheat in multiplayer games. It seems like "This does not directly negatively impact my gaming experience, I have no major problem with it..." and "This is affecting my COD experience, I can't believe GeoHot is jeopardizing the jobs of hardworking people at Sony, that selfish asshole!" are too many people's thought process when it comes to fiddling with consoles/handhelds/MP3s/smart phones.

Has the person been deployed overseas? Ask them about geofencing, and how it affects them. Whether a military person is in Japan or Afghanistan, if they're not in the US, they can't download geofenced content. That means that map packs, like World at War, Gears of War 2 and Black Ops can't be downloaded, even from an on-base connection. Treyarch posted about how you need to download the map packs for the game sold in your region, but if you're deployed military, buying the game on-base, you still can't download DLC on base, because your IP shows your connection as originating outside of the US. Basically, a lot of the military people I've talked to (who are all in Japan), use multiplayer video games to play with their friends and family back home, and it's a great way to stay connected when friends and family are on the other side of the planet. Unfortunately, when geofenced content is released, you either have to jump through VPN hoops to download it, or go without, which can put a crimp in social gaming when everyone else has the map pack. So yeah, my ideas for talking to anyone who's been deployed overseas: - Using online gaming, and especially Party Chat in group games like COD, to socialize with friends and family back home - Geofencing and their frustrations with it I also know that depending on where you're deployed, and who you're trying to game with, multiplayer games can be difficult/impossible. Depends on a lot of different factors. Hope that helps.

Not sure what's on the new page that isn't on the ca.kotaku.com site...but it looks like ca.kotaku.com is updating to me? I don't visit much any more, so maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not getting rid of my redirect settings and if that means I won't see it at Kotaku, if it doesn't make it into the Gappoi Newsfeed or get linked to by someone, meh, probably not that important. FWIW, the last two visits I made before this one were Beefychu's new sig, and No High Scores offering a Kotaku link for an alternate POV on Homefront.

hahaha. I was going to see if anyone had shared the Joystiq link in the Newsfeed, and Dean, the guy who put the link in the Newsfeed, has shared a different link. I still don't own ME2. I borrowed it from a friend, and didn't bother with DLC or Cerberus content because I knew I had to give the discs back. I definitely wanted to pick up a dirt cheap 360 copy over the holidays, but no one in the states who asked me what I wanted for Christmas actually picked me up ME2. (I have three siblings, and ME2 was one of two things I was interested in...none of them delivered) I'll probably replay ME2 (with DLC?) before ME3 comes out...so hopefully this DLC is good, and I'd love to grab a GOTY edition with all the DLC.

I like using gamerankings.com a lot actually. I have a handful of sites that I like for reviews, but if there's a game that I'm interested in making a purchase decision on, I like to open two of the lowest scoring reviews and two of the highest scoring reviews for that game. That tends to do a good job of showing you the game through the eyes of two people that really liked it, and two people that will focus more on the game's flaws. Basically, I want to see the cons of the game, and what might get in the way of me enjoying it, and see what people who liked the game felt it's main selling points and strengths were. (That was one thing I really liked about the old liked/hated format over at Kotaku, as they'd deliver both pretty clearly. Haven't read a good, helpful review there in a long while.) So, to go back to the idea of scores...I don't make a decision on a game's average or site specific review scores, but I do find the scores useful in having a rough idea of how the game was appraised by reviewers, and look for unusually high and low scores for the game to get those specific perspectives on the game. I find it works well for my purchasing decisions.

Wouldn't "hell of a crew" be a subjective opinion no matter what? It's not like there's a set criteria that we all agree on for what is and isn't a "hell of a crew". There's plenty of information on the About page, and more elsewhere if you want to track down the other works of each crew member. Yeah, there's a lot of fluff in the bio, but there also a section along the lines of in each bio. So, yes, we can see the basic credentials/history of each person. If someone wants to debate whether or not they're a "hell of a crew", that sounds like pointless bickering, because regardless of what the majority may or may not think, no one can prove that Tycho doesn't think they're a "hell of a crew", and that's how he chose to describe them.

This. There's even an achievement for beating the game without ever firing a gun (outside of the tutorial). Just cause it's got a first-person viewpoint doesn't mean it's an FPS. Just watched this week's episode of Extra Credits and instantly thought of this achievement. I haven't even played the game and that achievement sounds like the best example of what they're talking about that I could think of.