> > I wish it made me happier to point out that this is exactly what I was saying
> > all the time when the modding issue first blew up - the VPF admins are a bunch
> > of egomaniac hypocritical cowards. If a few more people had spotted what was
> > staring them in the face then, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess now.
> >
> I'm sorry things came to this. In the beginning I sidn't believe it'd come to
> this. When I asked AJ, Black, and others for a few 'toys' from tables they
> worked on I wasn't denied them. I didn't think VPINMAME tables would be locked
> or that people would go this far...


I've always believed that something like 1984 could happen, not right away, but SLOWLY, *VERY* slowly over time. They get you to trade a few personal freedoms for the "good" of the people. They try and try and try to take away your right to bear arms and form militias in the US. They point to all the crime using guns and they just ask for a "background check." It sounds PERFECTLY REASONABLE, doesn't it? It could elminate certain crimes or could it? People jump on these bandwagons and meanwhile personal freedoms just start eroding away until the point where the conditions become RIGHT for blatant paranoia and BS nonsense to start occuring. Look at what's happening right now in the US. We have one tragic incident in New York and certain leaders in the government are moving as FAST as they can to TAKE ADVANTAGE of the situation. Now is the time to pass bills that will let them SPY on Americans freely and without search warrants. They want to be able to search private e-mail with reckless abandon. They want to ban public encryption methods or install back-doors so they can read things that is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Privacy and personal rights are going away people. You might as well put your life on TV like "The Real World" pretty soon because that's how much privacy you're going to have.

"What he #%#%#ing sh#% does that have to do with VP and VPForums, PacDude? :)"

Nothing but the TREND for things to go WAY TOO FAR over long periods of time. Paratech never thought that locks would lead to this level of totalitarian behavior at VPForums, but a few of us are pointing our fingers right now and saying, "I TOLD YOU SO!"

I said a LONG time ago that locks would eventually destroy the VP community one way or the other. Well I was wrong...sorta. Locks were just another device along the way. PRIDE and its best friend EGO are ultimately what have been destroying the forums all this time...little bits at a time. What drove people to want locks in the first place? Paranoia, maybe? Some people thought that EVERYONE was out to mod their tables. They should be so lucky! That must mean they did a darn good job that everyone wants to tinker with their table. There are a LOT of BAD Vpinmame tables out there (as in low quality, poor recreations). I don't see everyone and their brother jumping on the wagon to go out and MOD the heck out of them. I've seen a few people at best and almost all of them have had permission to do so.

Some wanted locks as soon as one person modded Spiderman and pretended it was theirs. I have to wonder about that incident looking back. I have to wonder if it was even a real event or if it was someone planting the seeds of paranoia in the community. That person was easily dealt with and no one believed for a second that he made the table. No problem then right? WRONG. That set off a chain reaction that has been with us ever since. Nicky's background picture probably wouldn't have touched it off unless that seed was already planted. Why? Because he didn't do anything wrong. He posted a preview picture of a background photo applied to his personal copy of Jetsons (at the time most of his background pictures were just that, stand-alone pictures that people could apply if they knew how and wanted to).

Stein came in and REALLY REALLY planted HUGE seeds of paranoia both by raising a HUGE STINK about it instead of politely asking Nicky to not release the picture. I distinctly recall Nicky saying that if Stein had asked him not to, he wouldn't have ever released it. But instead Stein raised hell about nothing and in the end got exactly what he didn't want, the picture released anyway because he acted like a child about it.

Black made things far worse yet by supporting Stein on this in a big way, both by being a VP co-author that supported Stein publicly and by introducing the killjoy of VP, *TABLE LOCKS*.

"KillJoy, PD?"

Yeah. Have locks served their purpose in quieting down or eliminating the paranoia problem? Hell no! If anything the paranoia has gotten FAR FAR worse since they were introduced. People don't even use them and then they have fits about the idea that someone might mod their table at some point. And if they do use them, they LOCK EVERYTHING. And most, if not all tables locked as such have been extremely BUGGY and people can't help debug them because they can't even see what's going on. So then people whine and moan about the table being locked and the authors get EVEN MORE PISSED. Why? Because they want people kissing their ass for releasing the table, not whining at them! BZZZZZZT. Sorry. If you release a locked table, it had better be damn perfect and it had better be adjustable or you're going to get a bunch of whining. Many such tables have used hard-coded key tables and thus you can't use certain keys for your flipper keys etc. I had this problem with several tables ("H" being popular for "Help" makes it a problem when I use the home row for flippers and side-nudging just like The Web did by default when it shipped; it works much better than the shift keys, IMO). Also the lock system is easily worked around (a big bank vault with a state-of-the-art safe, but with cardboard walls).

> I just honesty thought it'd be nice to allow homebrew authors the right to have
> their work supported 'as is' and wanted measures to protect that.

The best way to protect tables is with respect, not locks. There are some people that are going to do what they're going to do regardless. But I think maybe even Nicky would be following at least the 'ask permission' rules right now if people had treated him with decency and respect instead of acting like he was a criminal for posting a picture preview. People really fell off the deep end with that one. I only hope now that the shit has finally hit the fan that it's a bit clearer looking back that Nicky wasn't just ranting and raving. If you had been treated that way, you might not have thought so either. The grass is always greener on the other side.

How many mods have there ever been of homebrew tables? The only one I think I've ever seen was a cabinet Nicky made for Jetsons at some point. Right or wrong it did look pretty cool that way and it was just a cabinet, not changing the game as far as I could tell. Most authors would have been pleased to see someone create a cabinet for them that they could use or discard. Nicky has mad "DX" versions of TAF and TZ before. I thought it was a neat concept, but I didn't care for the way it made the playfields so much smaller, but still, it never hurt anyone (least of all me) and some people really liked them. I still use Nicky's WhiteWater DX version here as it was the most realistic version made. If a nice cabinet was fitted to it, it would be even cooler.

> I don't 'hate' anyone but I strongly disagree with what's going on and IMSHO
> leaving VPForums is the only way to let this thing get settled...

I doubt it will get settled. There are too big of egos involved.