A true champion of free speech. 🙄

I love the idea, but I can’t see it actually working. Developers would just sell even more games as subscriptions instead of selling licenses, regardless of any interactive online content or lack thereof. (Think of EA’s 2013 release of SimCity with always-on DRM, for example.) Then when they want to shut their servers down, they just stop selling subscriptions and wait until the last one expires.

I don’t know anything about gnomes and barely anything about TTRPGs, but this question makes me think about social vs. medical models of disability. In our modern-day society, the social model would mean that autism is only a “disorder” because society doesn’t accommodate our needs well enough (or, sometimes, at all). It isn’t a disorder to be allistic because it’s “normal”, “the default”, nothing more than that. For example, in a hypothetical society where people widely use language very literally, the behaviour of not taking things literally could be labelled a disorder. Or if the vast majority of people had sound sensitivity, then someone without it who often forgets to keep their voice down might be seen as disordered. So if you do decide to go with this idea, I think there might be something to explore there when gnomes are interacting amongst themselves vs. with other groups.

If you’re concerned about “game author compares autistic people to gnomes”, is there a different class to use that might be a better choice? (I have no idea, but it sounds like maybe gnomes have a negative stereotype?)

Congrats!! 🥳

No, really, I used to end with negative scores all. the. time. 😅

Good question! Whether it’s actually infringement is a legal judgment I’m certainly not qualified to make. 🙂 But my understanding is that it hinges on whether a court thinks a “reasonable person” could be confused. For example, a clothing brand called “Firefoxy” would probably be in the clear since Mozilla isn’t in the clothing business. And maybe even a clothing brand named “Firefox” might be okay! For example, Apple Computer and Apple Records (founded by The Beatles) coexisted nicely for a long time until Apple Computer started getting into the music-selling business. I forget how it got resolved (maybe a licensing agreement?) but The Beatles’ music wasn’t available on the iTunes Music Store for a looooong time while that dispute was going on.

Firefish is an online service and software package, the very space Mozilla operates in, so there’s at least a case to be made that reasonable people might incorrectly assume it’s from Mozilla. It’s come up many times in this discussion already, and we as active Fediverse users are already pretty well informed about this!

The name is way too similar to the Firefox trademark and could create the impression that Firefish is associated with Mozilla. I suspect some lawyers are currently in a huddle trying to figure out how to send a Cease and Desist letter that won’t completely piss off the community.

(Trademark law, at least in the US where Mozilla is headquartered, requires organizations to actively defend their trademarks. So just ignoring Firefish would be risky, even if they don’t actually mind the similarity.)

Sounds like your boss was spouting some rubbish. Maybe they were having a bad day, but it’s no excuse for treating you like that (assuming — and I think it’s safe to do so — that you don’t have a history of repeatedly making this same mistake). Bosses are human too, but it’s still fair for you to be peeved about that.

Whenever an employee somewhere is apologizing to me (as a customer) for a mistake, I almost always reply “no worries, heaven knows I make my share of them too”. 🙂

Look for an instance that has adopted the Mastodon Server Covenant, points 3 and 4 deal with this situation. It’s just a promise, not a guarantee, but most people running such instances are doing it because they care deeply about their community.

Mod chips used to be necessary for playing games on CD-R, but now that can be done with just a 4-in-1 cartridge using the PseudoSaturn hack. My recollection is that Saturn mod chips only defeat the copy protection check and you’d still need another solution (like the 4-in-1 cart) for disabling the region-lock.

If you want a more authentic experience, Retro-Bit made some officially-licensed Saturn and MegaDrive replica controllers including USB and Bluetooth versions. Or you can get a DIY Bluetooth conversion kit for Saturn controllers from 8bitdo.

For sure, the Fenrir ODE (optical drive emulator) is a great option if the CD drive is dying or dead. The drive in my Saturn still worked fine last time I checked, but I was lucky enough to pick up a Satiator which plugs into the rear expansion port and leave the CD drive intact. (I think the MPEG decoder for VideoCD was the only official peripheral made for that port.)

Marginalized people would suffer far, far, far more than the bad actors. ☹️ Many people who have been doxxed already go through this, and it’s still near-impossible to stop an online harasser even if you have proof of who they are. It would become dangerous for us to be online at all if this “miracle” were to come about.

It’s very easy to get around region locking with a “4-in-1” cart, plus two of the other functions are RAM expansion (1MB and 4MB modes).

In addition to what others have said, it’s also becoming more difficult to find Saturns with working CD drives as they continue aging.

PS2 defaults to 4:3, digital out can be things besides HDMI, and the vast majority of 360 consoles sold had HDMI out. If you want to draw the line elsewhere, no big, do your thing, there’s no one True answer to OP’s question… but your comment feels like whataboutism to me and adds nothing of value.

In my view, systems without an HDMI output or which default to a 4:3 aspect ratio are retro. But I don’t expect everyone else to share this opinion, and that’s totally fine. 🙂

Yes, that’s exactly what I find concerning.

Direct link to the PDF: https://segaretro.org/images/8/8c/SegaFY1997BrandReview_US.pdf

I’m less concerned about my sex drive and more concerned about the negative racial overtones in this image. ☹️