The Dragon King
Pardon Our Dust! 
Sunday, August 5, 2012, 02:33 AM - General Site News
For anyone who had trouble downloading things in the past week or so I apologize. It was an unforseen result of BYOAC moving to a new server. I think everything is in working order again but if you have any issues please let me know.

Big thanks to SirWoogie for getting everything working again. He always handles all the byoac server stuff and the rest of us don't have to do squat. You should all shower him with reches and womenz and such. ;-)


Anyway, I have an app on the way so stay tuned for further updates!

SOPA and an Example of how it could effect this hobby. 
Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 03:39 PM - General Site News
If you went to BYOAC today you'll have noticed that the forums are blocked due to the SOPA protest. Because this little site is so low on traffic I thought rather than block the site, a better use of my time would be to try to educate everyone a little about how SOPA would effect the average page. You know, like this one. ;)

SOPA is advertised as a way to fight piracy, I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but their definition of piracy is so broad that it would effect far more than you can imagine.

Before we begin the breakdown understand that I am not a lawyer and I am merely posting examples based on how I understand the law. Also understand that I'm giving a worst-case scenario based upon the amount of power the law would give censors.

So lets have a rundown of how it would effect this site shall we?

Applications:

Virtually every one would be deleted. You see under SOPA emulators are considered tools for piracy and thus not only could any emulator be deleted but any tools aiding in the use of said emulators. So mamehooker, my wrappers, my front-ends, my emulator helpers... all gone. What about my original games? Those would be gone as well. The 3d games I made re-create old em machines that lack any copyright holders BUT they include artwork from said games and thus are considered to be in violation of copyright even though the copyright owners are no longer in business. My microsoft pinball arcade wrapper? Yup even that would go because it could be considered "hacking" pinball arcade and thus violates the DMCA.


Links:

We'll those are all gone as well. Even though my links don't go to sites that contain roms they DO go to sites that contain information about roms and/or copyright artwork. So those are all censored. Actually, by SOPA law they could merely block my entire webstie due to the collection of links. This would be due to laziness more than anything else. The law is worded so that you can block an entire site for violations simply because that is easier than modifying the site and removing offensive links.

Blog Entries:

Not only can hosting applicatiosn or linking to applications be considered a violation, but giving information in regards to how to use this applications or how to hack things are considered violations as well. So 90% of the blog posts could be censored as well.


The Website Logo:

Even though it is an original work created by yours truely, I used other artists' work as a base. Now even in the art community this is acceptable and not considered stealing so long as you adequately modify the source material to create an original work (which I have). But under SOPA artists rules don't apply, I used copyrighted source and thus the logo could be pulled.

Long story short if SOPA were to go into effect and they used it's power to the fullest extent this site would probably be blocked. If not then probably the only thing remaining of the website would be the post you are now reading.

This seemingly well-meaning bill gives too much power to the goverment and history has shown us that when the goverment is given power they eventually start using it to it's fullest extent.

Anyway, to anyone you stumbles upon this I hope it inspires you to take a stand against online censorship.

Some Downtime.  
Saturday, July 16, 2011, 02:00 AM - General Site News
Lately I have been doing pretty consistant updates and I like doing that when I can, but the real world is closing in and I'm going to have to take some downtime, probably for a month or so.

The Heater Core in my car busted yesterday, so unless I want to bathe in Anti Freeze I'll need to remove the dashboard, somehow become a contortionist, and get that swapped out.

Also the brakes on my mothers car went out at the same time, so I'm going to try to fix those for her as well.

I have other things going on as well but I won't bore you with details.

Needless to say updates and new software is going to be sporatic right now.

Stay tuned, as an update to mamehooker, and outrun drivers for mame will hopefully get released before the summer is out!

Back in the Saddle Again! 
Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 09:28 AM - General Site News
Well I became extremely busy last year and didn't get to do as much on the site as I wanted and I continue to be very busy, but that doesn't mean that I've given up.

I will slowly start to roll out releases again when I get time. Right now I'm working on a version of Mamehooker that I haven't touched since last year. Notable additions will be wiimote speaker support (really cruddy, but still) and a built-in ini editor!

Then I'll tackle the long neglected johnny 5, which I'm seriously considering overhauling onto a new programming language because SirPoonga and myself are overhauling the controls.dat project and it seems like an appropriate time.

In-between this I'll be working on MAME drivers again to get some outputs hooked up.


I can't promise anything but hopefully I can get some stuff out. A new release of MameHooker is probably due before the month is out, but as for the rest... we'll see.

Break Time! 
Monday, May 10, 2010, 10:12 PM - General Site News
I've done a lot this spring in terms of getting things back on track, but it's time to take a little break.

Although this site hasn't been updated all month, I've been working on mame drivers a lot, getting new outputs hooked up. I have a few outstanding drivers and hopefully I'll have time to get those out to mamedev before the month is out.

Unfortunately, this is about all I'll have time for right now. I caught a bit of a bug this weekend and that slowed down my real-world work schedule. There are a TON of things that need done around the house and the rest of this month, maybe more will be spent working on those.

After that expect some suprises. ;-)

So TTFN

I'll be back!


Back Next