Can we have a blacklist option in PNDManager?

[ZXDunny]

Sorry for this request, folks but it's becoming necessary now.

More and more devs are screwing up their apps and it's getting to the point where at least two need to be blocked from updating themselves on the "installed" page.

Mupen64 has gone from playable to decidedly unplayable now, and Magnetic has had all its adventures removed. To that end, I really don't want to update those anymore but when I navigate to the "installed" page in PNDManager, they of course show up alongside the updates I do want.

It might seem petty, but I'd like to be able to hit the "Upgrade all" button and have it ignore PNDs I've selected not for download. As it is at the moment, I have to upgrade each PND individually - that's not so much a problem but for the fact that if many small PNDs all finish downloading within a few seconds of eachother, the Pandora is effectively unusable for up to a minute while the new PNDs are installed into the system, which makes navigating menus quite difficult.

Any chance we could have an "update blacklist"?

D.

 

[Monkfish]

Well i found all the Magnetic adventures available online (google is your friend), they seem to work just fine. Re: Mupen i wouldnt know as i've never used it. I guess some kind of blacklist might be useful, for devs to see what has problems and need fixing. But who would maintain such a list? if a "blacklist" were to exist i'd suggest each entry be accompanied with pnd.out files to identify the problems as well as a brief description of any issues so they can be rectified quickly. Also devs should be notified that their software is on the list to draw their attention to any problems. But i'm left wondering would this be more or less efficient than the current method of Debugging PNDs. Interesting idea, and it just might work!

Perhaps you're discussing a kind of "personal blacklist" for PND Manager updates, again interesting idea might be difficult to implement. Personally i prefer to download stuff manually, which would remove the need for such a list. 

 

[MrConfusion]

 Magnetic has had all its adventures removed.

Though inconvenient, copyrighted material must be. That's no reason to blacklist the app and definitely no reason to not download an updated engine.

 

[Binky]

But who would maintain such a list?

Each user could maintain their own, private, local blacklist...

 

[ZXDunny]

Magnetic has had all its adventures removed.

Though inconvenient, copyrighted material must be. That's no reason to blacklist the app and definitely no reason to not download an updated engine.

It most certainly is a reason to blacklist an app. If it updates, I lose the games packaged inside. In what universe do you live that this would make perfect sense to you?

I don't want to stop using the app; I want to prevent it from being updated. Who are you to dictate what I should want to do with the PNDs I download? Do you work for Apple or something?

But who would maintain such a list?

 Each user could maintain their own, private, local blacklist...

Exactly.

D.

 

[MrConfusion]

Magnetic has had all its adventures removed.

Though inconvenient, copyrighted material must be. That's no reason to blacklist the app and definitely no reason to not download an updated engine.

It most certainly is a reason to blacklist an app. If it updates, I lose the games packaged inside. In what universe do you live that this would make perfect sense to you?


I don't want to stop using the app; I want to prevent it from being updated. Who are you to dictate what I should want to do with the PNDs I download? Do you work for Apple or something?

It never made any sense to package copyrighted material into the pnd to begin with. If anything, that is the problem.

It makes perfect sense to me that when this problem is spotted, the games are removed and you then need to obtain them yourself.

You don't expect a collection of bundled ROMs of "abadonware" with something like Drastic either, do you?

A retype of the second sentence I wrote: Assuming Magnetic, the program, gets fixes and improvements, I do not see having "huge effort" to redownload the games from abandonware sites as a reason to not upgrade to a better version of the actual program.

 

[moxie]

Yes, well, but apart from the "Oh noes theres an infestation of games in your pnd - Call the exterminator!" argument, it is a quite good idea. 

 

[ZXDunny]

Magnetic has had all its adventures removed.

Though inconvenient, copyrighted material must be. That's no reason to blacklist the app and definitely no reason to not download an updated engine.

It most certainly is a reason to blacklist an app. If it updates, I lose the games packaged inside. In what universe do you live that this would make perfect sense to you?

I don't want to stop using the app; I want to prevent it from being updated. Who are you to dictate what I should want to do with the PNDs I download? Do you work for Apple or something?

It never made any sense to package copyrighted material into the pnd to begin with. If anything, that is the problem.It makes perfect sense to me that when this problem is spotted, the games are removed and you then need to obtain them yourself.

You don't expect a collection of bundled ROMs of "abadonware" with something like Drastic either, do you?

Of course not. What I take exception to is your suggestion that after I've downloaded something, my usage should be in some way controlled and if what I downloaded mistakenly contained content that someone finds objectionable (such as copyrighted materials etc) then I should be forced to "update" it and have that material removed.

That sounds awfully like what happened to users when Amazon force-removed legally bought copies of 1984 from customers' Kindles. It sounds a lot like how stores like iTunes operate. Is that what you want for the Pandora? A walled garden?

Making up excuses like "You need to obtain them yourself" is just covering up the fact that you feel this level of control over users is warranted.

Assuming you're not a complete arsehole, then you will see that what I want is a way to make it easier for me to decide what gets updated and what does not - as the current methods are quite cumbersome and also very frustrating due to the up-to-ten-seconds freezes that occur when PNDManager has finished downloading a PND.

A retype of the second sentence I wrote: Assuming Magnetic, the program, gets fixes and improvements, I do not see having "huge effort" to redownload the games from abandonware sites as a reason to not upgrade to a better version of the actual program.

Absolutely, however I should be the one to decide if I value those improvements over the already installed version.

Case in point: Mupen64 has recently become almost unplayably slow on my CC Pandora and is missing a lot of the features that attracted me to the old version. Should I be forced to update to this new one? The answer is of course, "No" because none of the new features are in any way better for me than the old version.

D.

 

[rohezal]

I prefer an unstable, faster emulator, who crashes with certain games, when I don't play the games which crash . So it would be fine for me to have a local black list.

 

[MrConfusion]

ZXDunny, we are talking of two different things and clearly also represent two different viewpoints. The later, since yes: though I admit Amazon totally cocked up 1984, their intentions and methods upto removing data from the user's device were reasonable.

Had I been them I would have coughed up the difference (i.e. gifted the book to the people who managed to download the pirated book before Amazon spotted the problems), then paid to the publisher with rights and finally sued the house that fkced them over out of existence.

But it is always easy to say after the fact and calm deliberation. Their reaction was one of panic.

The Pandora is and should be open, your suggestion for a blacklist in PNDmanager is good, understandable and all that, I merely critiziced this single example you gave of it's use, pointing out that:

Everything in the Pandora repo must be legit. Fully. 100%.

This could, at some point, turn problematic even if no games were hosted, but that will then have to be dealt with should such time arrive...

Since I do not use PNDmanager I do not know how forcefully it updates stuff. Then again you're not talking about a feature of the Pandora itself, but rather of a feature of PNDmanager, the app. You are not forced to use that app either?

The Pandora will not be a walled garden as long as you can boot any OS you like. PNDmanager should not be a walled garden, but if it is, then all the same to me, since you don't need to use it...

 

[Ian J]

I agree that an option to not update a particular PND would be beneficial but think Blacklist may be a harsh term for the option.

Maybe it would be better have "ignore updates" as a toggle switch on each item.

 

[levi]

The problem Amazon cause when removing 1984 was not that they removed the book that people had incorrectly been able to pay for (although I admit they could have handled that better) but that they also deleted any notes users had made against that copy of the book. Those were irreplacable.


However, that's something of an aside. Old PNDs are still on the repo. You don't have to use PNDManager (indeed, it's not even bundled with the OS yet), and you don't have to 'upgrade all', but the ability to say 'lock this version' for whatever individual reason sounds like a good idea to me, and a genuine functional improvement. Perhaps it's something we even ought to have before it gets integrated into the OS package, if there's more than just you having trouble with the latest version of stuff.

 

[_jr_]

Having the 'blacklisted' PNDs on another SD card not inserted when running PNDManager does work for me.