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.

Nintendo 64 / First Post

I figure that I've got to have enough to say to provide a few minutes of insight into my thoughts every once in a while. Might as well do a blog since it's something that's always interested me. I'm also going to talk about whatever I am interested during the time of posting, whether it be music or a movie or a book that I'm reading, a game, whatever.

Anyway today I want to talk about the late and the great Nintendo 64. I grew up with this system as a kid, I remember being able to rent these from Blockbuster. That's something that's just unheard of today, where can you go out and rent an Xbox or a Playstation? Seriously, if you know that would be interesting.

Anyway, growing up we never really kept our gaming systems, we used to sell them to fund for the next upgrade, Sold our SNES for the 64, sold our 64 for the Gamecube. It's a damn shame too, because it's only now that I look back and wish that I still had them.

My friend introduced me to the Flea market near our houses and it was there that I re-picked up the black 64 box and a few games. It was like half of my childhood came flowing back, all the great memories of getting blisters from Mario party, and being enraged from dying in Super Mario 64.. and playing the disappointing Castlevania games..

I'm only playing, but really, Starfox 64, Paper Mario, Yoshi Story, these were all amazing games at the time of release, and I'm excited to hear that they're re-making a lot of them for the 3DS. That's really the selling-point for me.