This all just seems like a lot of trouble to play a game in a different language. Always the reason why I never imported games; I can't read Japanese. Sure, with some time, on some games you can navigate through menus, but you never truely understand what the hell is going on unless you're playing a fighting game or a beat 'em up. Just wait - or hope - for a US release, I say.Swifty_Magee

Understand that PAL gamers have a lot more to gain from importing.

[QUOTE="shano100"]but i can play a new game if i don't update the wii and its from my country can't i? and i can hook it up online if i don't have the freeloader in can't i?alexgangur

So long as the required firmware number (For Brawl, I think this is 3.1) matches the one you have on your console, you're fine, but you must NOT update your Wii, and you MUST make sure that you don't do an update from the US Brawl disc, but from YOUR internet service for your Wii from YOUR region.

Then, just make sure you don't update your wii again without first checking on the internet to see if people are claiming that the update breaks/doesn't affect the freeloader.

Some games will try to do an automatic update, so you may be forced to miss these all together.

If you want to ask anything else more specific just PM me, that might be easier.

but i can play a new game if i don't update the wii and its from my country can't i? and i can hook it up online if i don't have the freeloader in can't i?shano100

So long as the required firmware number (For Brawl, I think this is 3.1) matches the one you have on your console, you're fine, but you must NOT update your Wii, and you MUST make sure that you don't do an update from the US Brawl disc, but from YOUR internet service for your Wii from YOUR region.

Then, just make sure you don't update your wii again without first checking on the internet to see if people are claiming that the update breaks/doesn't affect the freeloader.

Some games will try to do an automatic update, so you may be forced to miss these all together.

I heard back, this is what they had to say:

Further to your email we can confirm that on every occasion that the product is used when the disc is inserted in the console that it allows the usage of an imported Wii game disc and disables the console from been able to update its firmware. As with any console which has updatable firmware we can not guarantee that no firmware updates will affect the usage of the product but if Nintendo were to release a firmware update which affected the usage of the product we would try to as previously done with our Wii compatible GameCube products to release an updated version of the product to resolve the problem.

Unfortunately, it seems that they are going to be b*****ds with their approach to selling the product, and will simply re-release the freeloader over and over again with updates.

(I'd like to add though that there is a difference between a reliable company, and an exploitative company. The product itself is very reliable, so long as it doesn't become obselete.)

Oh well, at least this + a chip will work perfectly.

Better luck with the Action Replay, maybe.

Considering it has taken a good year at least for a Freeloader to come out for Wii I would hope those issues are resolved, it shouldn't be too hard to circumvent the update unless Nintendo specifically writes an update to block the freeloader.. if that happens my faith in the big N, who I've supported since I was 7 (now 28), will be sorely shaken.SolemnJedi79

I haven't heard back, so this is still just speculation...

But I suspect that becuase of the nature of the Freeloader as a bootdisc, updates should be possible by transferring a file from a computer to the Wii's memory, which is treated by the Wii as game save data. The freeloader may be programmed to check the memory for these updates, and when it finds them, it runs the code embedded within them, as opposed to it's own (outdated) code.

Honestly, that should work. As to whether or not this is what will happen is only up to Datel, and is yet to be seen.

Caveat emptor is all I can say about this.ThePlothole

Regarding what, the potential problems I outlined?

Like I said, so long as I get a response that addresses these, this is perfect. If I don't get a good response, I'm still going to import one with Brawl and not update my Wii until Brawl comes out in Australia.

Datel is actually a really reliable company, so I hope you're not questioning that.

http://uk.codejunkies.com/Products/Wii-FreeLoader__EF000595.aspx

oh goodie...

Big problems though - what are they doing about:

a) possible future firmware updates by Nintendo that will render the freeloader useless.

b) preventing automatic updates on discs from installing firmware from the wrong region on your Wii? (this bricks the Wii, by the way...)

I've emailed Datel about both of these potential issues, and hopefully I'll be able to report back soon.

[QUOTE="MrGeezer"][QUOTE="Smaug84"][QUOTE="MrGeezer"][QUOTE="Smaug84"][QUOTE="MrGeezer"][QUOTE="Schwah"]

Take something as seemingly simple as murder. Is murder right or wrong? Many of us would say that murder is wrong. Okay, what about when you or your family is being attacked? Is it okay to kill another human being then? What about capital punishment? What about killing an enemy combatant during war time? What about a sacrifice for the greater good? What about killing that rat bastard who killed your little girl?

Smaug84

But NONE of those situations are defined as murder except for the last one (and possibly the next-to-last one, though I'm not sure since that's too vague a description).

And yes, if you intentionally go kill someone who killed someone you love, you can be charged with murder. Because unlike capital punishment and killing as part of a national military, vengeance killings are seen as going AGAINST the common good. Vigilantism is seen as being detrimental to the common good, that's why it's still illegal.

Isn't there situations throughout history where military battles could be considered nothing more then massive amounts of vengeance killings?

Of course. I never said that morality is always impleneted correctly. It is often misapplkied, and we have a tendency to stick to old moral codes after they have outlived tgheir usefulness.

But when you get down to the SOURCE, almost everything that everyone considers the "right" thing to do has it's basis in a moral code that has clear and definite benefits. People don't just say "this is right and this is wrong" just for the hell of it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you about the source of morality. Personally I think the source of morality came from laws that have existed throughout history, as such crimes like rape when committed by those in the military tended to not be considered important by the state that sponsored the trooper, except in obvious cases like raping the governor's daughter etc.

Personally though I tend to look at the origins of morality through nihilistic lenses. Take situations where children were raised feral, they have no morality, and they exhibit many characteristics that aided them in surviving in the wilderness. So we can verify that children are blank slates when it comes morality.

As for universal constants in morality which I assume you imply by the "SOURCE" is nothing more then a fabrication created by men who dream of a faux utopian world. Issues like constant warfare, rape, cannibalism etc, have been proven to vary according to various cultures as they laid their morality down throughout history. For instance the Asmat before they were integrated into world civilisation by the Europeans & Indonesians; they mysteriously had no problem with cannibalism, in fact they considered it a duty when certain actions occured. While the Yanomano tribe in South America has some of the largest death rates for their young men to constant warfare. And the Dani have the interesting custom of cutting off a finger of female relatives when a child dies in their family. I don't find it interesting because of some odd sadistic joy, instead it comes from the uniqueness of their culture.

Now I probably miscontrued your argument Geezer, and I apologize if that occured. Oddly enough I end up unintentionally creating strawmen at times because of my wandering mind. So if I did create a strawman take it in stride and use my argument to broaden the discussion. :)

As far as feral children goes, I have a question...how likely is it for a feral child to produce offspring? Compared to a child raised in civilation, how likely is a feral child to live to reproductive maturity? Furthermore, if a feral child does manage to live to reproductive maturity, how like is it to ever actually produce offspring?

Children may be more or less blank slates, but certain slates are far more likely to be evolutionary dead ends. Adopting certain characteristics may help a person survive in harsh conditions, but that is ultimately irrelavent if those same traits keep that person from procreating. Whether you live to 70 or die in the womb, if you don't reproduce then you are an evolutionary dead end. Your contribution to the genepool is nil.

Well I can't exactly prove that feral humans will produce offspring, but I would tend to think that if a pack of children grew up together in the wild they would eventually have sex. Nevertheless they wouldn't have morality over murder or rape in all likelihood since those come from human civilisation. In fact I would be curious to know if a group of feral children could survive without self-destructing, and from there if a generational constant would be produced in which case a new culture would be birthed. The good news though is that experiments with feral children ended decades ago. Group morality tended to disapprove over raising children to be feral.

Of course this is all conjecture since a group of feral humans would be welcomed to the world of breaches and other such negative aspects of pregnancy, along with several utterly vicious diseases.

Even if feral children did have off-spring, the morality in terms of murder would still be in place given that the underlying instinctial desire for the group to survive was in place. Just like in every other animal "group", or herd, you wouldn't expect the feral children from a particular "group" to accept murder as ok, because it is a counter-intuitive behaviour in the face of that instinct to keep the "group" alive. However, they may happily kill others from outside their group, because as MrGeezer has been saying, other people would come under the category of THEM. I think that when you look at the situation of feral children, you're really just moving far back into the evolution of human social interaction. While within that group rape might not be an immediate "wrong", given time (generations, for example) it may eventually be realized that rape, while with no apparent immediate proof of being "wrong", can easily lead to something such as murder within the group due to revenge or something similar, which would be percieved as wrong as per the necessity to maintain the group as a whole. Rape may also be realized to have a negative overall effect on group morale, which would also potentially have a negative overall effect on the longetivity of the group.

I don't know exactly how much sense I have made, but basically I'm trying to say that even things such as murder and rape, and even in such circumstances as feral children, can be explained to be "right" or "wrong" in terms of MrGeezer's concept (one which I share). However, I also acknowledge moral relativism as being very relevant. If the concept I believe in is actually correct, then presumably any action which is considered to be "right" or "wrong" is so because it has somehow been connected, whether positively or negatively, to the ideal of maintaining the "group". Obviously, then, different "groups" (and people within those groups) will potentially have different perceptions as to what is detrimental and what is benificial to the group, whether directly or indirectly, based on circumstance and what each person consideres to be their "group". If one set of groups have found that rape results in murder within the group, it probably becomes taboo, whereas in another group rape may not result in murder (for whatever reason), and thus it is treated with indifference in this respect (or may even become percieved as benificial). Once certain perceptions are maintained for long enough, they may become integrated into the culture of the group, and thus certain perceptions will become much more consistant throughout the group. Now the definition of the "group" is also important - if Hitler did not percieve communists to be amongst "them", then he possibly would never have attacked the Russians. Furthermore, if Hitler was not only concerned about the Aryan race, but also the Slavs, then he certainly wouldn't have attacked the Russians, because they would be considered to be "us". Ultimately, it would seem that people's perceptions of being members within different groups are prioritized somehow, and loyalty to one group or another boils down to circumstance, past experiences etc.

I think I just went on another tangent, but either way, I suppose I describe my belief of how morality works as the concept of destroying "us", the group, being a well defined central point or "wrong", and then every other type of behaviour forms fuzzy edges around this point, and moral relativity determines for each person whether or not particular behaviours connect, whether directly or indirectly, with this underlying "wrong" behaviour.

Mind you, I think that this fundamentally crucial "wrong" of destroying "us" has been defined in us as an instinctial thing - the most important element of the so-called desire to survive. Thus I must say that the idea that there is no reason for "solid" right or wrong to exist in any form is not correct. As far as I'm concerned, the element of relativism is which group and what circumstances you consider yourself to be under IN TERMS OF THE UNDERLYING "WRONG" OF DESTROYING "US" - however such an element of relativism is as obvious and intuitive as, say, whether or not you're happy or sad about being on one side or the other in a sports game where one team has lost and another has won.

"1. No, you showed me a video of how components needed for life could come together. But they're still dead. It's not growing, replicating or moving. Unless you can do an experiment that actually creates life instead of just pieceing together chemicals or creating building blocks of life, it is not alive."

You cannot approach his counter-argument in this fashion unless you are willing to enter a heavy philosophical debate on the topic of what is life. I suggest you read some material regarding this, however. Now this will be dirty, vague, and simplistic, but to summarize: "how do you even know that the people around you are actually 'alive'"? It may sound silly at first, but think about it. Do you really know that the people around you aren't just reacting to stimuli around them in the same way that a computer reacts to different kinds of input? I mean, I know I hardly make it sound convincing, but that's why I suggest a philosophical essay or book on the topic (I could recommend "Philosophy Gym", which is a good introduction to a wide range of current philosophical problems). Now apply this question of what is "alive" to the amino acids. Are they alive? I mean, look at the same phenomena in ourselves. We are just big lumps of meat, really: what is there to prove physically, that we are currently aware of (because I do believe that the phenomena will be explained in due course...), that we are capable of thought; consciousness? Food for thought, hopefully...

"I do know that "evolution" is true in the sense of slight changes, like how Darwin's finches adapted to their environment. But I'm talking about his theory - his proposed big changes that's referred to as macroevolution. You're mosquitoes are nothing new; they're still mosquitoes. Show me something that has gone a major change that you can't even call it the same kind of living thing anymore. People has tried to mutate fruit flies (who are probably pissed for deforming them) but it only resulted in malformation. What you listed due to my laziness is not so different from the races of mankind from "natural selection.""

Your demands are unreasonable. You are demanding proof of the full evolution of one species into another from a theory that suggests that this happens over massive periods of time. That would be the exact same thing as demanding from a Christian to show direct and decisive evidence immediately (hell, even over 100 years) that God is real - it just doesn't work, because similarly, religion is revolved around the principle of faith, which such a demand does not coincide with.

But... There are two very interesting things I can show you. The Tame Silver Fox is the result of a Soviet Russian experiment, in which wild silver foxes were put under experimental conditions to observe the process of domestication. To make a long story short, the results include:

"...the foxes not only become more tame, but more dog-like as well: the new foxes lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs."

"...Russian scientists now have a number of tame foxes which are fundamentally different in temperament and behaviour from their wild forebears. Some important changes in physiology and morphology are now visible, such as mottled or spotted colored fur..."

(Wikipedia)

The experiment has proven under modern scientific that, not only does the process domestication produce, in a sense, behavioral evolution (the passing on of the "tameness", or at least the vastly improved capacity to become tame, to the young, it also produces physical evolution in the form of physical changes).

The second thing, relating to these physical changes: a recent report has shown from St. Bernard skull samples over a 150-ish year period that distinct physical evolution does indeed occur given time.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/071025/139/6me2p.html

(This isn't a particularly detailed overview of the findings, but I have read a more thorough report. It just needs finding.)

Point: if these sorts of minor changes occur over short periods of time due to a form of "selection", then the potential certainly exists for major noticable changes to occur over much larger periods of time. Just don't be prepared in your demands to see this kind of large-scale evolution unless you're prepared to find a way to live for many thousands of years (technically speaking though, the theory does demand more time than that, so...)

Argue my points to your heart's content. Please, though, at least take to time to take my advice on delving into some philosophical studies.