Monday, April 11, 2011

Jailbreaking / Modding, Opinions?

There are a lot of very smart people out there today, and thanks to this mysterious and incomprehensible connection between your screen and mine we are able to interact with them. Among those people are those known as "hackers" or "modders" and I mean the actual people who design them, not the thousands of people who use them. Companies like Sony are starting to have these raging campaigns against these people on the grounds that they're losing money to the people who pirate using these mods. On one hand I agree, if I were in their position, I would be angry too, but since I am also a consumer, one with minimal funds mind you, I am also on the opposing side. I think it's safe to assume, now with Bittorrent and the such running rampant, that downloading these games is now comparable to downloading music.

I've heard both sides of the argument. I've heard the companies complain that they're losing money and that the industry is going under, and I've heard from consumers that downloading is safe because they wouldn't have been able to afford the games anyway, so no sale is lost. I understand it's an argument that's been beaten to death a million times, so there's really nothing I can say about it to add any new insight. But does all modding have to really be bad?

I've seen a lot of home-brew applications on my Wii and on my PSP that did things that they were never intended to be able to do. They're able to emulate old PC games like Doom, and they're able to become things like Alarm Clocks and Torrent Clients, Game emulators for previous systems, the list goes on. If the companies didn't fight the modding community so harshly and actually embraced it, couldn't they work together to create better devices with more accessibility?

Open Source is the way to the future I believe, that's why browsers like Firefox are so great, and even other programs like Open Office, Operating Systems like Ubuntu (Which I use on my Sony Vaio laptop, It's great, user friendly, and 100% free), Audio recording and editing with Audacity, Photo manipulation with Gimp, the list totally goes on and on. People really need to start working together in every way possible to have as much innovation as we can. I believe that's how we can get to the technological future that we see in movies.

31 comments:

  1. I believe open platforms are better for everyone. Just look at how soon PS3 was hacked after they removed Linux support. people will always find a way if there is enough of those who want something out there.

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  2. Thanks for the post, always been interested in modding.

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  3. Thanks a lot. I may mod my Wii. I already modded my PSP.

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  4. That's why the Android is one of the best smartphones. Opensource is the way of the future and companies trying to limit production and creativity is sickening to me.

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  5. Open source is the best source, it will be the future for sure!

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  6. "I've heard the companies complain that they're losing money"

    Yeah, poor motherfuckers

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  7. Lol, i guess i could understand if i was part of a company, i probably wouldn't want people messing with my shit either. but... i sympathize with the consumer on this one.

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  8. I modded my Wii so I could run 3rd party apps defiantly worth it.

    If your into dubstep checkout. Rusko,Skrillex, Netsky, starskey, Eskmo, Shpongle, Modestep, Bare Noize, Skism, Borgore, Nero

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  9. i think if you buy it.. you should be able to mod it, if you break it... its ur fault.

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  10. I support those peeps.

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  11. a;ways wondered how productive moding my DSi would be

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  12. Personally I am of the opinion that anything that can be spread digitally should be free - music, books, games, movies, etc. Those that want to make money off of their products should offer some other, non-digital incentive for purchasing the physical copy. It's absolutely ridiculous to charge $1 for a "song", when it's really just a bunch of numbers in a computer and is near free to transfer. Same thing with games.

    If they included cool stuff with the physical copies, stuff that can't be pirated, like the kind of stuff they send in special collectors editions, then they'd make their money anyway.

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  13. open hardware is the way of the future. also i followed you bro

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  14. I softmodded my wii so it can play DVD's, other than a gameboy advanced emulator though, I havent seen that much that interests me on the homebrew channel.

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  15. For me, open source is already my main source of software. If there is no open source solution, it usually is not worth having at all.

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  16. I modded my Xbox so now I can play non-original games, but that messed up with original games and now I can't play some games I like :(

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  17. i agree that open source is the future. i was very surprised to find out that jailbreaking an apple device is legal.

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  18. Modding is not the easiest thing to do, and there will always be those who buy them anyways, I don't have a problem with people doing it, but I can see how the companies might

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  19. I think modding is a very positive thing. As for opensource, in principal it's a great idea. However, there are very few open-source projects with good enough management that fragmentation, poor documentation or low user uptake aren't a problem. I'm not sure if this is something that can be solved either... The freedom to do what you will with a program and for others to contribute will always mean multiple versions float about, with users being unsure of the differences.

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  20. I had a jailbroken ipod touch at one point.

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  21. Definitely YES for modding, when I buy something I want to do with it whatever I want. Open Source - this is great thing, done by users for users, it's focused on making 'digital' life easier; big companies want just money, rarely thinking about theirs customers (let's face it, it's true).

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  22. I'm with you on the importance of Open Source.

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  23. And I'm with all of you who are with open source. Only makes things better, imo.

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  24. i jailbreak my iphone. i want to do it to my ps3 but im a little scared to brick it

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  25. One of my friends modded his ipod and it's pretty awesome

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