huh, I've not seen FDS games packaged like this, in... DVD cases?

also what kind of a game name is SUPER BOY ALLAN?

inside:

ooh, manga manuals.
we should bring back physical game releases just so we can have more manga in the box

it's on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133554004889

I watch FDS releases on ebay because I'm trying to find a specific sort of pirate disk: the kind with almost-"nintendo" text.

because the word "NINTENDO" at the bottom of the disk is part of the copy protection: the drive has little pokey bits that make it not work if the word isn't there

this is a trick Nintendo (and Sega) have used before, where they make the system depend on their name, which means that they can prevent piracy in places that'll let them use trademarks but not copyright, which was a thing at one point (in Taiwan, I think?)

so eventually pirate ones just had holes there because they figured out that'd work:

some early ones did it by having text on there that WASN'T Nintendo, so they had no trademark problems, but it was close enough to work.
Like Nin(tf)endo

or NINIENDO

anyway I've been looking for one of these for a long while, and they seem to be rare. probably because no one bothered to keep pirated disks this long.

but someday I'll have some INFRENDO disks

oh hey, here's a better picture of one of the NINIENDD disks

This is for my floppy disks exhibit, the FDS section:
I've got a generic pirate disk, the legendary TURBO DICK, a game on the blue disks with shutters, and two legendary FDS original games: Metroid and Legend of Zelda.

The FDS, btw, was a Japan-only add-on for the Famicom, the Japanese equivalent of the NES.
It let you play games off floppy disks.

but every time I talk about the FDS disks at the exhibit I tell the very interesting story about how the nintendo lettering is physical copy protection and I mention the fun INFRINDO-style disks and every time I have to go "I don't have one, but..."

SO I WANT ONE

because someday the virus will be less virus and I'll be able to go to vintage computer festivals and make people look at my disks/discs again.

Turbo Dick, BTW, is what happens when you're not sure if it's "Disk with a K" or "Disc with a C" so you give up and try to find a compromise in the middle

it's also a good name for a sex machine.

hmm, maybe a sex machine that runs off floppy disks.
You could program in different "personalities" by inserting disks. so instead of going "harder!" you insert disk #17

although the idea of saying "harder" to a sex machine makes me wonder if anyone has made a sex machine hooked up to google assistant or siri or alexa or whatever, so you could actually tell it that.

"OK GOOGLE, FUCK ME FASTER"

I'm sure both of these two ideas don't exist
and DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF?

holding out for my imaginary chuck tingle novel, "orgasm ruined by a bad sector error on disk #17"

Now I'm imagining a Drugs & Wires-style alt history where we still use floppy disk and society is inexplicably obsessed with computers and there's a version of Cosmo magazine with the hot sex tip of:
if you really want to drive them wild, take it to the next level with disk 17

That's the webcomic drugs and wires, for reference. It's set in a fictional post-Soviet state in the 90s with floppy disks, but also VR and cyborg implants. https://www.drugsandwires.fail/ 

You really don't want me building a sex machine.
It's just a bad idea all around.

Friend: hey foone, thanks for the sex machine, it's been real helpful for my porn shoots.
Me: no problem!
Friend: and the Alexa integration for hands-free operation is really useful, don't get me wrong...
Me: glad to hear.
Friend: I just have one big question...

Friend: DID YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE ALEXA CONTROLLER INTO A BIG MOUTH BILLY BASS?

Me: yes. Very technical reasons why. You wouldn't understand. There's baffles and air channels, it'd take a scientist to explain it, and I'm from the humanities.

On the plus side, it'd probably be the first sex machine you could play doom on.

I'm just saying if you're ever on some sketchy porn site and there's a stream-rip of a woman having sex with a robot that seems to have a plastic fish glued onto it, you'll know I went over to the dark side.

Also I say this like it's all a hypothetical joke, like it wasn't just a week ago that I was trawling through aliexpress trying to see if anyone was making sex toys with screens I could hack into playing doom.

The answer seems to be "not yet" but some of them are getting close, so it's only a matter of time.

There's a few with calculator-style fixed LCDs and with the way prices on small OLEDs and LCDs are dropping, soon we'll have bitmapped displays on sex toys.

After all, there's already a few clones of that high end electronic toothbrush which has a screen, and what really is the difference between an electric toothbrush and a clitoral vibrator? The attachment on the business end.

And to quote Sarah Millican, keep them very separate, or you might get them mixed up and "take all the plaque off [your] nunny"

But yeah. In non sex toy news, obviously I'm gonna get one of the lcd toothbrushes and make it play doom and/or rickroll.

CNN: President-elect J. Biden's pick for surgeon general, Dr. Foone B. Turing, recommends that to fight plaque and the scourge of gingivitis, all citizens need to brush their teeth for at least 3 minutes and 35 seconds.

They suggested that 3 minutes and 30 seconds might be acceptable if you're using the instrumental mix off the 7" single.

I'm just saying that for under 23 billion dollars we could ensure that every resident of the US has a brand new electric toothbrush that'll helpfully time out how long they should brush for!
(Minus licensing costs, of course. Someone get RCA on the horn! )

You might think 23 billion dollars sounds like a lot but that's only a bit more than it cost us when PG&E burnt down the city of Paradise, CA.

Imagine how much more valuable it would have been if they hadn't skimped on maintaining their power lines and we instead used that money to rickroll everyone in the country.

Sometimes I like to contextualize things like imagining I'm explaining them to an alien who is still learning about our strange little world.

"so yeah, this company burnt down a whole town. Killed almost a hundred people, destroyed like 20,000 buildings, turned 50,000 people into refugees. Did 16 billion dollars worth of damage."
"a terrible loss! And you say this happened because they failed to maintain power lines?"

"yeah. Some of them were very old and rusting, and if something failed in dry, windy conditions, it could easily start massive fires that spread very quickly."
"I see. And why weren't these power lines maintained? Was this a new unexpected failure mode, like that bridge?"

"The Tacoma Narrows Bridge? No, nothing like that. It was understood, just not being done."
"Why not? Was there a labor shortage? A war? Some kind of disease outbreak or wild animals making it too dangerous to inspect and repair the power lines?"

"no, nothing like that. It was just, uh, too expensive?"
"was not the city-destroying wildfire very expensive!?"
"for sure, but they were playing the odds that it wouldn't happen, and they lost.
Plus, well... Most of that cost didn't go to them, it was paid by others."

"ahh. A sad moment in your history, certainly. We have had our own share of those kinds of painful lessons. So, I assume that company is no more? There's some government agency, non-profit, or failing that, another company that now manages your power here?"
"uhhhh... No."

"They're still around? But in name only, I'm sure, right? The original company went bankrupt and the executives were publicly punished, so that the next thousand generations know that some discounts come at too high a price?"
"No, they're still the same company."

"they must have gone through massive reforms though, right? They completely cleaned up their act, launched a massive campaign of repairing power lines, and ensured nothing like this would ever happen again, right?"

"well, they don't have the money for that, they had to pay 13 billion dollars for their role in the fire. In fact, because of that, my area is under a warning this week that the power might be cut off, since they're worried about high winds and their aging power lines"

"they had to pay 13 billion in damages?"
"yeah."
"for a fire that did 16 billion in damages?"
"right"
"maybe I'm not understanding your math here, hu-man, but that sounds like they got a 3 billion dollar discount on top of not paying to maintain their infrastructure"

"that's pretty much it, yeah."
"where will the missing 3 billion come from, then?"
"oh, the taxpayers, probably."
"so all of you collectively are subsidizing this company playing the odds and losing, even though the risk of failure is the destruction of entire cities?"

"well... Only kinda. Plus some of that 3 billion is damages, but that doesn't mean it HAS to be paid. That's how much was lost, but some of it won't be replaced. Paradise won't just come back, some parts will remain burnt out wastelands for years."

"Hang on. I checked on your 'Wikipedia' and it says in 2017, PG&E had total assets of 68 billion dollars. That sounds like they should have plenty to cover the damages they did in the 2018 fires."

"they probably did, but a lot of those assets are going to be things they can't easily convert into money. They're things like infrastructure, for example."
"Infrastructure? Like the power lines?"
"yeah, that kind of thing."
"The ones that were faulty and burnt down a city?"

"right, those."
"it seems that their large assets, combined with their clearly amoral management of them and the risks faced by the public, that the only logical option would have been to sell off their assets to pay for the damage, and have other organizations take over."

"maybe? But they're a monopoly in this part of the world."
"so they have no competition? No alternatives?"
"No, not really."
"how did they become a monopoly? Were they created by the government as the sole power management company?"

"no, there used to be competition, but they ended up winning and squeezing the others out of the market, at least around here."
"how did they 'win'?"
"well, they provided power at a lower price than the other companies, so naturally people picked them."

"were not they able to provide power at a lower cost because they were saving money by not doing vital maintenance on their power lines?"
"pretty much, yep."

"I see. Well, at least you have the lower energy costs, though. I believe you call that a 'silver lining'?"
"we do, but... No. See now that they are a monopoly they can raise prices all they want. It's not like we can go somewhere else."

"so you got higher prices and poor maintenance that sometimes causes entire cities to be destroyed, and this is in exchange for what, exactly?"
"well, their stock was doing pretty good. So I'm sure some people made a bit of money there."

"I see. Yours is a strange people, f'oon."

I think I got subliminally inspired to rant about PG&E because I'm parked in front of the smoke zone again.
The sky is blue this time, though.

See my earlier thread of Smoke Zone inspired PG&E ranting. https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1304428973686796293?s=19

Sorry. I try to keep my posts more positive and non-political (on the idea that you see enough negative political news already) but that's a lot easier to do when I'm not getting daily alerts that my power might get shut off, from the company that already destroyed a city.

Maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe that's why PG&E hasn't been punished like they should be.
People aren't seeing "PG&E destroyed a city" as a sign of how terrible and guilty they are, they're seeing it as a threat.

The next time anyone in Sacramento gets up in the California State Legislature and talks about how we need to revoke the license of PG&E to operate in California and nationalize (stateize?) all their assets and build a new energy organization that'll put our safety first...

Some big guys in ill-fitting suits knock on their door and say "mighty fine capital you have here. Very flammable. Lots of power lines, eh? Be a really shame of anything were to happen to it, you know?"

That's silly of course, because it implies we're paying PG&E protection money.

And as the former city of Paradise found out, that 17 billion we're paying PG&E a year sure as hell ain't for "protection"

Although now I have the funny idea of a The Day The Earth Stood Still alien coming down and warning earth that while they're fine with us doing whatever we want on our own planet, they can't risk it spilling out into space and affecting other planets.

And the human scientists are like "very well, we will learn to control our warlike ways and not threaten our own planet or any other with our atom bombs!"

And the alien goes "what? No! Hang on, my translator is on the fritz again, let me check my notes... Ahh. Here it is. I believe you pronounce it 'capitalism'?"

AND THAT'S WHY THE US GOVERNMENT WILL NEVER LET YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT ROSWELL

It's the fever dream nightmare of every 1950s general.
Some buzzcut with a cigar, sunglasses, and too many medals stares down a flying saucer as a little green man walks out and says "we come in piece, comrade"

He wakes up screaming, covered a cold sweat, and reaches for his revolver he keeps in the bedside drawer just in case the USSR ever invades his suburb. The gun can't hurt nightmares, but it makes him feel safe, if only for a moment.

I'm deeply amused by the idea that earth might be quarantined. Not for our own benefit, like with the star trek prime directive, or for fear of disease, like the Martians in war of the worlds.
No, earth is in quarantine because we have an idea they want to make sure can't spread

The aliens explain it kindly and calmly. They've seen the capitalist planets. We aren't the first or only species to invent the idea.
But they usually don't find one that's still alive.

The capitalist planets can be recognized by their faint glow, thousands of years after the final war for resources that ended them.
Or the barren landscapes, all the trees chopped down for lumber and for space to build farms and factories. The scared landscape from stripmining.

And the oceans so full of dissolved CO2 that the acid can be used to disinfect starship hulls.
And most often of all, they can be recognized by not seeing them at all, the surface or oceans completely hidden by the thick layer smoggy clouds.

Oh yes, they've seen capitalist planets before, Mr. Ambassador.
And most of them look like venus.

(the alien federation's economists sometimes bring up the nightmare idea of what if a capitalist civilization survived the transition to a spacefairing one, and they tend to chuckle and reassure each other that it could never happen, they all destroy themselves first)

(but in the quiet moments late at night, they keep themselves up with the what ifs. The invaders dropping out of the sky to uproot your entire civilization because it will make them some kind of imaginary points.)

(the quiet star systems that send no ambassadors but only generate endless automated probes which take apart asteroids, planets, and space ships alike, to process into raw materials and more probes.)

(all attempts at communicating with them, from friendly requests to threats of war, have failed. We don't know if they simply don't care or if they've long since died, and their eternal legacy is just a paperclip optimizer that is intent on taking apart the galaxy to make profit)

All they know is that one day an explorer vessel is going to spot a still living capitalist and start setting up a quarantine barrier when the sensors detect a small space stations and several robotic probes.

And no one knows what the sealed letter from the high council will instruct them to do, but some suspect that once the captain gets it out of the safe, their next orders will be to turn off the mission recorders and target all available implosion bombs at the star.

Civilizations advanced enough to become interstellar don't have to deal with many existential threats, but the few they do have, they're going to have to deal with them harshly and decisively.

And I can easily imagine an alien race that reacts to "that planet uses a capitalist economic system" the same way they'd react to "that planet had a grey goo outbreak and the goo now seems to be building rocket ships and antimatter bombs"

Nuke the planet from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

The worst thing about trying to maintain a list of links to my Interesting Reading Rant Threads is that I have to try to describe them.
So this is... what?
"Nintendo Famicom Disk System Copy Protection & bootleg disks, Sex machines, PG&E fires, and Alien Communists"?

and what category do I put this in?
Gaming? Biology? Science Fiction? Should I make a Sex category? Maybe it goes under US History & Politics? Maybe even 'The Cold War'? oh, I have one for "Money", maybe that's it?

clearly it goes under "floppy disks", obviously.

I ended up putting it under "Science Fiction & Anime" under
"Nintendo Famicom Disk System copy protection/bootlegs, sex machines, explaining PG&E fires to aliens, and alien socialists quarantining earth for the most dangerous meme of all"
https://floppy.foone.org/w/Twitter_Info_Threads#Science_Fiction_.26_Anime

Anyway the REAL takeaway from this thread should be that we should petition the unicode consortium to add this letter to unicode 14.0.
I'm tired of not being able to properly spell the name of this bootleg floppy.

anyway if you are asking yourself "how the heck did this thread go from A to B to C ... to Z?" the answer is simple: "I have ADHD"

and normally after a rant this long and retweeted I link to my patreon and ko-fi but that seems someone inappropriate after spending 50 tweets talking about space-socialism.
so I won't. If you still want to give me a dollar, they're in my profile.