The official word is on warioworld.com and scedev.net, but I've been repeatedly told that you should first make and self-publish three successful games for Windows, iOS, or Android before companies like Nintendo will even give you the time of day. That's what Robert Pelloni found out when he wanted to start a home-based business to develop and sell his RPG Bob's Game for DS.

One thing that consoles get right is cost per player. A family can buy three gaming PCs and three accounts for each game. Or a family can buy one or more low- to mid-grade laptops with integrated graphics, one console, a couple extra controllers, and games that support split-screen multiplayer (such as Mario Kart) or non-split shared-screen multiplayer (such as Smash Bros.). Which costs less?

Good luck controlling Smash Bros. on a touch screen and not losing to every single 3DS player.

And your developers, allegedly. The 1- to 3-man home-based family businesses that helped Apple's App Store eat away at much of the casual market are something Nintendo wouldn't even consider courting three years ago. Only very recently did this begin to change, and unfortunately, my citation about this ("Tales from the trenches: how Microsoft is losing the battle for indie developers" by Ben Kuchera, March 2013) has become a dead link.

That'd be like telling Hasbro to stop making My Little Pony based toys.

Nintendo's problem is that this isn't Nintendo's market anymore; it has become the App Store and Google Play market. The big advantage of a 2DS/3DS over an iPod touch or iPad mini is that iPod touch and iPad mini ship with only the positional control (a multitouch screen), not directional or discrete trigger controls (the Circle Pad, Control Pad, and buttons). And not everyone wants to buy a $40 Bluetooth controller that clamps onto a tablet just to play a $10 or cheaper game.

What GPLv3 and LGPLv3 call "Installation Information" GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 call "scripts used to control compilation and installation". LGPLv2.1 does permit static linking of "the Library" (a covered work) with a proprietary program so long as the EULA does not rule out end user modification: "you may also combine or link a 'work that uses the Library' with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications." Option 6a lets the application publisher ship .o files of a "work that uses the Library" (that is, the proprietary parts of the application) and "any data and [specialized] utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it" along with the executable, and option 6c lets the application publisher offer to distribute a copy of said .o files and data to the owner of a lawfully made copy of a combined work. The fact that such "data" would have to include a private signing key is how even LGPLv2.1 could be read to defeat tivoization.

http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

What you say is true of MIT and BSD licenses as well as the GNU All-Permissive License. But LGPL is really just GPL with an exception allowing linking the covered work to a proprietary program in such a manner that the user can replace the covered work with a modified version. This permission is unacceptable on platforms that have a general policy not to execute code that the platform's gatekeeper has not approved or code that has been modified since the platform's gatekeeper has approved it. So you can't really use an LGPL library in an application for an iOS device, major game console, or major handheld game system unless you're the author of the entire library or unless you have a dual license, and the featured article is about opposition to giving the library's maintainer the option of granting such a dual license.

How about "pass on skills across generations without requiring a living carrier"?

Why doesn't the summary for articles like these spell out unfamiliar abbreviations such as "contributor license agreement"?

Yes, because the piece of gear is still "perfectly functional". It's just operating in a different, more malware-filled environment than what Microsoft had anticipated in 2001 when developing Windows XP. It's not really that hard to install Xubuntu.

I guess the peace of mind that comes from increased difficulty of inadvertently installing a trojan is one more reason that the majority of people, who do not need programming tools or wireless network troubleshooting tools, can choose a platform that isn't general purpose, like iOS or PlayStation 4.

I'd start asking what the secretary means by "not working": "When you try to print a document, does the printer start making noises? Does an error message appear on the computer's display, and if so, what is the exact wording?"

It is if the blogger has ads on his site.

So does someone become a "journalist" merely by properly citing sources? If so, the biggest difference between a journalist and a Wikipedia editor is that unlike a Wikipedia editor, a journalist is allowed to make an original synthesis of information from published sources.

By whom is a journalist regulated?

Because the law allows for a blogger who cites his sources and who makes and follows a reasonable code of ethics.

A professional is one who gets paid for his work. Put AdSense on your blog and you're a professional.

People for whom $300 is a lot of money, such as K-12 students who receive an iPad as a gift and can't earn money themselves because of child labor laws, might have no way to "just [...] buy another device". Take, for example, a high school student who has only an iPad and brings home homework from a programming class in which he has enrolled. Will the parents necessarily be willing to jump online and buy a Raspberry Pi, USB hub, wired keyboard and mouse, and all the rest of the supporting peripherals so that he can complete his homework?