Ayumi Hamasaki
One of the greatest Japanese music artists of all time.
Blag
Like a blog, but better.
DRM
Officially Digital Rights Management, but more accurately Digital Restrictions Management. Technology designed to "manage" (i.e. take away) your rights to use digital media. The copy protection on video discs, the encryption on music downloaded from most online stores (though many no longer employ it), the rootkits once distributed on Sony music CDs, and such infamous blunders as Starforce and Assassin's Creed II are all examples. More information here.
F3DEX
RSP microcode (graphics program) used in some N64 games, such as Mario Kart. Essentially Fast3D but more powerful. Not binary-compatible, but very close (mostly just instruction numbers changed).
Hacking
Modifying program binaries (especially games, in my case). Writing code that may not be beautiful, reliable, or standards-compliant, but does the job. Not to be confused with cracking, the act of breaking into a computer system.
Lua
A pretty great programming/scripting language. Simple, fast, lightweight and powerful. Not an acronym.
MIO0
Compression format used in some N64 games.
Rena
This one has a few different meanings, all essentially spawning from the same idea.
At the root of it all is Rena Kunisaki, seen in the corner of these pages. Perhaps the most beautiful person to ever not exist, she inspired most of the other meanings directly or indirectly.
When I started working on a Mario Kart 64 editor, I knew it would be one hell of a project; likely my finest work. In the mindset of Harald Hoerwick, I felt it only made sense to name it after her.
I eventually grew tired of the name I'd been using online, so when I posted in places where it didn't really fit anyway, I would use ⬡ (a single hexagon) as a name. However, not every place allows Unicode characters in names. IRC is one notable example. For various reasons, I decided to use Rena in these places. This can lead to some confusion when I want to talk about Rena the program while also being called Rena myself, but oh well.
This name also occasionally springs up in a few other places from time to time.
Renamon
This is an amusing coincidence. When I saw this character I thought it looked pretty badass and would make a great "fursona". Turns out its name is Renamon. This was after I'd started using the name Rena. I guess it's just such a great name that anything using it has to be cool? ^.~
Segment 6
The N64 GPU doesn't access main memory directly. It has an array of pointers, each of which point to the beginning of a memory segment. All pointers in GPU code consist of a segment number and offset. Mario Kart keeps most of its interesting data in segment 6.
Sony
I don't buy from these guys and neither should you. Reasons include (in no particular order):
- Released rootkits on music CDs as "copy protection". These would worm their way into the system, breaking many things, opening some gaping security holes that other viruses then used. Sony was finally forced to provide a removal tool, but somehow they got away with making it another scam: you had to use IE, on the infected machine, to download it (so their nice ActiveX component could kick in). It only worked on that machine. (Sorry, those of you who can't bring it online and/or install IE.) You had to provide an email address. They very clearly stated that this email address would be added to marketing lists. Man, it must be nice to be a giant corporation and be allowed to get away with anything.
- Used what amounts to the legal equivalent of gang violence to shut down the fantastic online store Lik-Sang because they were selling PSPs in places Sony wasn't.
- Created phony movie reviewers to promote their movies.
- Generally just sells shabbily-designed products and takes forever to get them right. Look at the PSX's overheating issues, the PS2's faulty lasers, the PSP's faulty buttons and disc drives and abysmal battery life. All eventually fixed, but that's not much good for the suckers who got stuck with earlier ones. PS3s have been known to be rendered unable to start up by a software update. Then they charge you for the repair. Um, how is that legal again? You break it, you buy it.
- Advertised and sold PS3 as being able to run Linux. Neglected to mention that it was effectively crippled (no GPU acceleration at all). Later issued a software update that removed this advertised feature, because of "security issues" - one person had, in conjunction with a hardware modification, used it to bypass their restrictions.
- Pointless restrictions. PSP's video player won't play fullscreen videos, for the sole reason that they didn't want it to be able to play copied UMD videos and DVDs.
- General bullshit. PSP offers some nice examples. I bought a PSP headphone remote. It wasn't compatible with my PSP. Wrong plug. Plenty of companies pull bullshit with nonstandard incompatible plugs, but here's a product designed for a particular device that isn't compatible with the very device it's designed for. They also switched from standard USB to a proprietary plug on later PSPs. Oh, and UMD. "Universal Media Disc." A proprietary format that works on only one device, and not even all models of that device, is about as far from universal as you can get.
SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics. Explained and demonstrated here. Pretty cool shit.
