Perhaps you can come up with something that somehow relates to a hybrid automobile without going on with some heavy-handed diatribe that has, as I said, already seen plenty of publicity in other mediums? That is what we call 'trolling', whether we agree or not on the point in question (which, obviously, we do)
Having looked recently at the state of California's DMV website that there are a number of ILEV (compressed natural gas, electricity, etc.) equivalents of current vehicles (Dodge Caravan, etc.). Are these just normal cars, made to fit ILEV standards by use of kits as well? If you're in California this may interest you, since ILEV vehicles (assuming they pass SULEV standards, which most ILEV *and* hybrid cars do) can drive in the HOV lanes w/o meeting HOV passenger standards.
Unfortunately, though I've heard some debate on this regarding current events, the state of California does not allow hybrid cars in the HOV lanes w/o a second passenger. This seems funny, since my Toyota Prius gets ~50 MPG, meaning its consuming less than half that - and often closer to a third - of most large SUVs. One person using gas in a 50 mpg vehicle still means less consumption than 2 using a 15-20, and the whole point of the HOV lane was to promote conservation.:/
How is this 'interesting' when its a complete tangent towards a plenty-publicized political agenda? I agree with it in its entirety, but that just makes it a troll I agree with.
No, it absolutely doesn't, but it also means that white collar criminals are one step further removed from the rest of them, which is a gross mockery of justice.
Re:Sociological implications.. and the flipside?
on
Virtual Girlfriend
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps its a means to undermine the Korean birth rate.
Sociological implications.. and the flipside?
on
Virtual Girlfriend
·
· Score: 1
Don't suppose anyone's considered the implications a game like this has for gender equality, particularly in countries that aren't exactly known for supporting their women? Given that the only thing this e-girlfriend responds to is money, it doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture.
Of course, the flipside could be an e-boyfriend in the shape of a vibrator, and the more times you use it, the more malleable the will of this e-boyfriend becomes. Advanced features might include the ability to lift heavy objects, run to the store to buy tampons/pads, and, perhaps with the 'webcam/paypal' add-on, the ability to buy things.
Big difference between a search protocol, which is a value entirely based on the server-client relationship, and a messenger system, in which the client experience is directly related to the amount of fellow clients. My guess is you either use an omni-client of some sort, or you don't use Instant Messaging at all, or this would seem a lot more like common sense. Try talking a friend who uses MSN into switching over to AIM, even though all their friends use MSN too (or vice versa). Or even try convincing them to use an omni-client - see if they really want to put up with configuring it for each protocol they want to use, etc.
I shouldn't have to disclaim this, but just in case, let me remind most of the people using Instant Messaging services are entry-level computer users. They dislike 'options' menus, as is their right.
If a patent reviewer doesn't react with an "ah ha!, now that is interesting" that indicates he/she understands the topic and what is unique about the idea, then it shouldn't be accepted.
A patent reviewer's immediate grasp of a technology should absolutely *NOT* function as the crux of whether or not a patent is given to an applicant. The fact is, these patents are complex, but even though you may understand them, you still have to go and find out if someone has patented anything similar or identical. That's simply too much work to do in the period of time they're given to do these things, a problem which could be mitigated by proper staffing.
Additionally, the patent system has grown to encourage frivolous patent applications, meaning the load just increases.
Let's be fair, if you had to read these at the rate they do at the USPTO, then figure out exactly wtf all this double-talking techno babble means, eventually things would start blending together and crap like this would filter through. I thought it was generally accepted that the main problem is not that the USPTO people don't know what they're doing, it's that 1) the patent process has been turned from a means to protect innovation into a profitable business model, and nobody seems to want to stop it, and 2) the USPTO itself is understaffed.
Counter-strike's popularity is in its multi-player. The 'content', for all comparison purposes is the experience, and the people you're playing against. Doom 3 was a single-player game. Huge difference. Huge. Did I say huge? I meant really big.
Speaking as an employer, I'm very happy with this trend. The quality of graduates with programming degrees has been absolutely terrible for years now.
As someone with a mediocre CS education myself, I'd like to add that it is in no small part because several institutions have been forced to teach to the lowest common denominator, meaning if you didn't already have a background, you weren't getting much in the classroom, and you were left to learn on your own. This is good for some people, but not everyone can approach things that way. I couldn't. I'm not going to make up some half-assed disclaimer for why I found myself lazing my way through much of college, but I count myself lucky that I have, thus far, managed to stay afloat despite having a lot of catch-up work to do since getting my foot in the door of this industry.
This may look like flamebait, but give it a chance first.
My primary programming experience a year ago was in Java, followed by C/C++. Along the line at my most recent job (which was a year-long internship, meaning I had a lot of freedom to pursue my own learning course), I had to choose a scripting language to use to develop a number of very diverse testing tools. I looked at bash, expect, Perl, and Python.
- Bash went out quickly, it simply wasn't powerful enough. - Expect, as well. Especially since there are expect modules for Python, and I'm assuming Perl wouldn't have too much trouble emulating expect-type functionality, either. - Perl was powerful, but the code got thick and convoluted. - Python was like Perl, only readable, and easily extensible should my needs ever require that.
I went with Python. I know Perl has several advantages, I have and had no intention of discounting it, but in truth I kept coming back to one point, and this is where it ties into the article:
Perl seems so popular, in large part because people can 'show off' their geekiness by making one line of code do about 50 different things.
This is great, except that it makes it infinitely harder to read, *AND* 99 times out of 100, the Perl code I looked at had been written the long way, FIRST, and *then* abbreviated. That means that someone took the time to do things in the same length of time it would've taken them in Python, then took *EXTRA TIME* to exert every shortcut upon their code to make it brief and, frankly, aloof.
I will admit, that as you use Perl more and more often, you can probably do these shortcuts in your head, and things become familiar very quickly. The problem is, that still doesn't make your code readable, to anyone else, or to yourself a month later when you haven't looked at your program in a while.
So why is it so appealing? I think it is because, as I was looking at Perl, I found myself very attracted to the notion of how 'cool' it would be to have one line of code do so much work. It was like taking engineering a step deeper, and instead of engineering software, I was engineering code. Still, this all obfuscates the simple fact that the code isn't necessarily shorter, it's not necessarily any more powerful than, say, Python, and it's less reusable. The reusability in particular is a major problem when writing, as I was, test tools, because it makes it that much harder to go back later and figure out exactly what your results mean if it wasn't clearly documented, or if changes need to be made to the testing criteria, or to the test target itself.
So in summary, it felt like Perl was a lot of flash, flare, pomp, and pretense, and while a good deal of it was well-deserved because it *is* a powerful scripting language, there was enough additional 'crap' that made me steer away from it as my language of choice.
So my question is, is it possible that, given the following:
Indeed, these statistics about Cobol or Java being the most popular language can be misleading. What we ought to look at, if we want to know what tools are best, is what hackers choose when they can choose freely-- that is, in projects of their own. When you ask that question, you find that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the number one language is probably Perl.
Is it possible that the number one language is Perl because a significant portion of the people who use it do so because it helps them feel geekier, 'hacker'-ier, or somehow more 'cool' in their programming methods? I feel as if the author may've misled his readers by suggesting that you can simply 'Listen to the Hackers' in order to figure out what the best language is. As much as we like to look up to them, hackers, indeed geeks in general, are just as susceptible to mistakes of pride and vanity as anyone else.
Did you seriously just suggest that people reboot just to make a damn bank transaction? Do you have ANY concept of what a consumer is? Why in God's name would anyone ever convert to the first bank to do this? No average consumer is going to run around thinking they're infected with spyware. Most consumers don't even know what spyware IS. Even when they learn they'll think of it the same way people think of viruses now: 'Oh those sure are scary, but I'm really glad they always happen to the other guy.'
Seriously, though. Rebooting just to complete an online bank transaction? Good lord.
I hear this is really only a placeholder to the followup technology, SUPER MEGA ULTRA HYPER-variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing COMBO RAVE, ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT EDITION (SMUH-WSF-OFCDM-CR,UTE) downstream technology.
Just a rumor. I work for Nintendo you know. In Japan. I have connections to this sort of thing.
I'm 24 and my "reflexes" have actually gotten better over the last two years.
This is in part due to a change in mice - the Intellimouse 3.0 never really clicked for me, the Logitech MX700 [yes, cordless] works great, in part because it's heavier, which keeps it from going flying.
It's also due to a change in focus and mental approach.
I don't think you can truly judge your reflexes based entirely on whether you're aiming better than your opponents.
Especially if you've been out of it for 5 years. Gamers all over the world have gotten a LOT better at FPS games, because they've been around longer and they've started at younger ages. The reason your reflexes aren't as good is probably more related to the fact that you haven't played in 5 years (it takes a long time to get your aim back in playing shape even if you've only been playing another game, let alone nothing at all), and the fact that the rest of the world is better than the flops we were used to picking on lo those years ago. For the record, I've been gaming competitively since Quake in 1996 or so.
I have actually heard people call chess a 'sport' before. On TV. On ESPN in fact. Still, I doubt you or anyone else would be satisfied by that justification - I wouldn't. So let's get deeper.
A preliminary look at dictionary.com reveals this as a definition for sport:
Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
This would seem to further your point, but upon a closer look, you'll see this, as well:
Of, relating to, or appropriate for sports: sport fishing; sports equipment.
The important part: sport fishing! Fishing is not a sport that requires intense conditioning. In fact, neither does bowling, or auto-racing. None of these require conditioning, and therein lies the point.
Conditioning is not requisite to whether or not an activity can be considered 'physical', only that the action in question implement some sort of physical faculties. Reaction and coordination are as fundamental as you can get when it comes to sports, and since reaction time and hand-eye coordination are two of the fundamental necessities for any 'cyberathlete' (I really hate that term, mind you, because I *DO* maintain that being an athlete requires some sense of conditioning), then I think you have, right there, a perfect case for why 'esports' is indeed a sport.
It's not a substitute for getting off your ass and going to the gym, however. In fact, several of the top 'esports' personalities do maintain some sense of physical shape. It's an undeniable fact that being in shape can only benefit you, physically as well as mentally. You're a lot less likely to be exhausted after a day-long tournament if you're in good shape.
Before the Dotcom burst, there were a number of 'esports' teams getting sponsorships. After the economy tanked, the whole process slowed down a bit, but it's been an interesting barometer to notice that a lot more teams are getting sponsorships lately, some with old companies, some with new.
Also interesting is that most of the sponsorships I've seen go to teams in Europe, like the bevy of top-notch German and Swedish gaming clans. The reason for this is that gaming there is a far more common thing. Gamers view LAN tournaments as the ultimate competitive venue, because of the low latency, the presence of tournament computers that generally eliminate any framerate issues that one's own PC might have, and because there are often prizes for gatherings such as that. The close proximity and population density, combined with the greater popularity of competitive gaming in these regions leads to a lot more corporate attention.
The LAN tournament scene is only recently looking to pick up lately in the US. Before the only tournaments you could find were for Counterstrike, and generally run by either the CPL, or by the WCG (an Olympics style competition, with a limited number of entrants per country, making it very difficult to qualify). So far this year there've been 2 relatively large ones here on the West Coast, both featuring flavors of Unreal Tournament and the Battlefield series (BF:Vietnam and BF:1942), as well as Call of Duty. There are few more that I am aware of planned for the summer, as well as one in Colorado and a particularly large one in Kentucky.
All of these tournaments feature some notable prizes. The NVidia tournament featured $4000 prize machines (which I think are actually worth more like 2.5-3k, not that anyone's complaining) as well as $500 cash to the first place winners. On a more realistic level, Newegg.com held one with P4 3.2 GHz CPUs, motherboards, and a $100 gift certificate for first place.
So you can see the money flowing into these events, and the question a lot of people ask is 'Why?'. The reason companies are so interested in gaming and gamers is because video games are notorious for pushing computers to their limits. Because of this, hardcore gamers tend to seek out the highest-performance equipment they can get their hands on. This makes them perfect opinion leaders for the rest of the hardware market.
Of course there are some doubters and nay-sayers who question whether 'esports' is really a legitimate venue for competition because it doesn't involve a bunch of steroid-hyped testosterone-appealing dudes in uniforms. The simple fact, though, is that competitive venues will thrive wherever they can sustain themselves. Magic: The Gathering tournaments weren't big by accident. There were people who wanted to play it. Similarly, e-sports has been a competitive platform of its own for several years now. First with the PGL, and through various incarnations to the CPL, as well as other tournaments such as the annual World Cyber-Games (WCG) which have a HUGE following in Korea, and will be having their first event hosted outside of Korea this fall in San Francisco, and smaller tournaments such as the aforementioned NVidia tournament hosted alongside the GeForce 6800 unveiling, the Newegg tournament(s), Million-Man Lan in Kentucky, PDXLan in Portland, and so on.
If it were all a big joke, people would be laughing, but they're not. They're shelling out money to travel to these events and compete and hopefully come home with some pretty respectable prize purses.
Have you seen how many reruns of the World Series of Poker hit ESPN2 lately? It's not just an acceptable competition venue, it's POPULAR. Silly notions like yours are losing their footwork in light of this.
I follow the second paragraph, but I'm a little confused on the 'news outlet' comment. If Slashdot isn't a news outlet, then:
1) What exactly does "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." mean, semantics aside?
2) Assuming the line is drawn in front of the fact that Slashdot reports news stories from other news sites, does Slashdot instead being a 'news digest' (or whatever we want to call it) really provide exemption to these standards I spoke of?
I may've been semantically misleading, but I don't think the point is lost, and I can't help but think that the confusion is trifling at best, respective to the topic at hand.
Yes, it is possible that this sort of thing happens frequently.
. . . That's what makes it news worthy.
I know you were reaching for rhetorical value, here, but to address the unspoken question, if the news here is that this sort of thing does happen frequently, then it should be stated as such, not in an manner that indubitably furthers an agenda many people on this site already espouse to the point of religious fervor.
So what exactly makes this news-worthy? Is it possible that this sort of thing happens frequently? Judging by the miniscule amount of the fine in comparison to the dollar amount spent, I can't imagine why this is a significant fine (as someone else has posted, a 'disclosure oversight').
For all the griping we do about the duplicitous nature of certain 'fair and balanced' news outlets (and their ilk), it would seem we'd hold Slashdot to some sort of standard.
P.S. Yes, I know this has been hashed, rehashed, and then many times again. hash_count++
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you can come up with something that somehow relates to a hybrid automobile without going on with some heavy-handed diatribe that has, as I said, already seen plenty of publicity in other mediums? That is what we call 'trolling', whether we agree or not on the point in question (which, obviously, we do)
Having looked recently at the state of California's DMV website that there are a number of ILEV (compressed natural gas, electricity, etc.) equivalents of current vehicles (Dodge Caravan, etc.). Are these just normal cars, made to fit ILEV standards by use of kits as well? If you're in California this may interest you, since ILEV vehicles (assuming they pass SULEV standards, which most ILEV *and* hybrid cars do) can drive in the HOV lanes w/o meeting HOV passenger standards.
:/
Unfortunately, though I've heard some debate on this regarding current events, the state of California does not allow hybrid cars in the HOV lanes w/o a second passenger. This seems funny, since my Toyota Prius gets ~50 MPG, meaning its consuming less than half that - and often closer to a third - of most large SUVs. One person using gas in a 50 mpg vehicle still means less consumption than 2 using a 15-20, and the whole point of the HOV lane was to promote conservation.
How is this 'interesting' when its a complete tangent towards a plenty-publicized political agenda? I agree with it in its entirety, but that just makes it a troll I agree with.
No, it absolutely doesn't, but it also means that white collar criminals are one step further removed from the rest of them, which is a gross mockery of justice.
Perhaps its a means to undermine the Korean birth rate.
Don't suppose anyone's considered the implications a game like this has for gender equality, particularly in countries that aren't exactly known for supporting their women? Given that the only thing this e-girlfriend responds to is money, it doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture.
Of course, the flipside could be an e-boyfriend in the shape of a vibrator, and the more times you use it, the more malleable the will of this e-boyfriend becomes. Advanced features might include the ability to lift heavy objects, run to the store to buy tampons/pads, and, perhaps with the 'webcam/paypal' add-on, the ability to buy things.
Big difference between a search protocol, which is a value entirely based on the server-client relationship, and a messenger system, in which the client experience is directly related to the amount of fellow clients. My guess is you either use an omni-client of some sort, or you don't use Instant Messaging at all, or this would seem a lot more like common sense. Try talking a friend who uses MSN into switching over to AIM, even though all their friends use MSN too (or vice versa). Or even try convincing them to use an omni-client - see if they really want to put up with configuring it for each protocol they want to use, etc.
I shouldn't have to disclaim this, but just in case, let me remind most of the people using Instant Messaging services are entry-level computer users. They dislike 'options' menus, as is their right.
Great, I can't wait to see a Nobel Laureate yelling out 'FIRST POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111'
If a patent reviewer doesn't react with an "ah ha!, now that is interesting" that indicates he/she understands the topic and what is unique about the idea, then it shouldn't be accepted.
A patent reviewer's immediate grasp of a technology should absolutely *NOT* function as the crux of whether or not a patent is given to an applicant. The fact is, these patents are complex, but even though you may understand them, you still have to go and find out if someone has patented anything similar or identical. That's simply too much work to do in the period of time they're given to do these things, a problem which could be mitigated by proper staffing.
Additionally, the patent system has grown to encourage frivolous patent applications, meaning the load just increases.
Let's be fair, if you had to read these at the rate they do at the USPTO, then figure out exactly wtf all this double-talking techno babble means, eventually things would start blending together and crap like this would filter through. I thought it was generally accepted that the main problem is not that the USPTO people don't know what they're doing, it's that 1) the patent process has been turned from a means to protect innovation into a profitable business model, and nobody seems to want to stop it, and 2) the USPTO itself is understaffed.
Counter-strike's popularity is in its multi-player. The 'content', for all comparison purposes is the experience, and the people you're playing against. Doom 3 was a single-player game. Huge difference. Huge. Did I say huge? I meant really big.
Speaking as an employer, I'm very happy with this trend. The quality of graduates with programming degrees has been absolutely terrible for years now.
As someone with a mediocre CS education myself, I'd like to add that it is in no small part because several institutions have been forced to teach to the lowest common denominator, meaning if you didn't already have a background, you weren't getting much in the classroom, and you were left to learn on your own. This is good for some people, but not everyone can approach things that way. I couldn't. I'm not going to make up some half-assed disclaimer for why I found myself lazing my way through much of college, but I count myself lucky that I have, thus far, managed to stay afloat despite having a lot of catch-up work to do since getting my foot in the door of this industry.
My primary programming experience a year ago was in Java, followed by C/C++. Along the line at my most recent job (which was a year-long internship, meaning I had a lot of freedom to pursue my own learning course), I had to choose a scripting language to use to develop a number of very diverse testing tools. I looked at bash, expect, Perl, and Python.
- Bash went out quickly, it simply wasn't powerful enough.
- Expect, as well. Especially since there are expect modules for Python, and I'm assuming Perl wouldn't have too much trouble emulating expect-type functionality, either.
- Perl was powerful, but the code got thick and convoluted.
- Python was like Perl, only readable, and easily extensible should my needs ever require that.
I went with Python. I know Perl has several advantages, I have and had no intention of discounting it, but in truth I kept coming back to one point, and this is where it ties into the article:
Perl seems so popular, in large part because people can 'show off' their geekiness by making one line of code do about 50 different things.
This is great, except that it makes it infinitely harder to read, *AND* 99 times out of 100, the Perl code I looked at had been written the long way, FIRST, and *then* abbreviated. That means that someone took the time to do things in the same length of time it would've taken them in Python, then took *EXTRA TIME* to exert every shortcut upon their code to make it brief and, frankly, aloof.
I will admit, that as you use Perl more and more often, you can probably do these shortcuts in your head, and things become familiar very quickly. The problem is, that still doesn't make your code readable, to anyone else, or to yourself a month later when you haven't looked at your program in a while.
So why is it so appealing? I think it is because, as I was looking at Perl, I found myself very attracted to the notion of how 'cool' it would be to have one line of code do so much work. It was like taking engineering a step deeper, and instead of engineering software, I was engineering code. Still, this all obfuscates the simple fact that the code isn't necessarily shorter, it's not necessarily any more powerful than, say, Python, and it's less reusable. The reusability in particular is a major problem when writing, as I was, test tools, because it makes it that much harder to go back later and figure out exactly what your results mean if it wasn't clearly documented, or if changes need to be made to the testing criteria, or to the test target itself.
So in summary, it felt like Perl was a lot of flash, flare, pomp, and pretense, and while a good deal of it was well-deserved because it *is* a powerful scripting language, there was enough additional 'crap' that made me steer away from it as my language of choice.
So my question is, is it possible that, given the following: Is it possible that the number one language is Perl because a significant portion of the people who use it do so because it helps them feel geekier, 'hacker'-ier, or somehow more 'cool' in their programming methods? I feel as if the author may've misled his readers by suggesting that you can simply 'Listen to the Hackers' in order to figure out what the best language is. As much as we like to look up to them, hackers, indeed geeks in general, are just as susceptible to mistakes of pride and vanity as anyone else.
there are already three times as many phones in use as personal computers
And then there are also 3x as many chargers. So *what*? What's the correlation? 95% of all statistics are bull****.
Did you seriously just suggest that people reboot just to make a damn bank transaction? Do you have ANY concept of what a consumer is? Why in God's name would anyone ever convert to the first bank to do this? No average consumer is going to run around thinking they're infected with spyware. Most consumers don't even know what spyware IS. Even when they learn they'll think of it the same way people think of viruses now: 'Oh those sure are scary, but I'm really glad they always happen to the other guy.'
Seriously, though. Rebooting just to complete an online bank transaction? Good lord.
variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (WSF-OFCDM) downstream technology
I hear this is really only a placeholder to the followup technology, SUPER MEGA ULTRA HYPER-variable spreading factor orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing COMBO RAVE, ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT EDITION (SMUH-WSF-OFCDM-CR,UTE) downstream technology.
Just a rumor. I work for Nintendo you know. In Japan. I have connections to this sort of thing.
Last year's World Series of Poker winner actually qualfied for the World Series of Poker through an online tournament at Pokerstars.
I'm 24 and my "reflexes" have actually gotten better over the last two years.
This is in part due to a change in mice - the Intellimouse 3.0 never really clicked for me, the Logitech MX700 [yes, cordless] works great, in part because it's heavier, which keeps it from going flying.
It's also due to a change in focus and mental approach.
I don't think you can truly judge your reflexes based entirely on whether you're aiming better than your opponents.
Especially if you've been out of it for 5 years. Gamers all over the world have gotten a LOT better at FPS games, because they've been around longer and they've started at younger ages. The reason your reflexes aren't as good is probably more related to the fact that you haven't played in 5 years (it takes a long time to get your aim back in playing shape even if you've only been playing another game, let alone nothing at all), and the fact that the rest of the world is better than the flops we were used to picking on lo those years ago. For the record, I've been gaming competitively since Quake in 1996 or so.
I have actually heard people call chess a 'sport' before. On TV. On ESPN in fact. Still, I doubt you or anyone else would be satisfied by that justification - I wouldn't. So let's get deeper.
A preliminary look at dictionary.com reveals this as a definition for sport:
Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
This would seem to further your point, but upon a closer look, you'll see this, as well:
Of, relating to, or appropriate for sports: sport fishing; sports equipment.
The important part: sport fishing! Fishing is not a sport that requires intense conditioning. In fact, neither does bowling, or auto-racing. None of these require conditioning, and therein lies the point.
Conditioning is not requisite to whether or not an activity can be considered 'physical', only that the action in question implement some sort of physical faculties. Reaction and coordination are as fundamental as you can get when it comes to sports, and since reaction time and hand-eye coordination are two of the fundamental necessities for any 'cyberathlete' (I really hate that term, mind you, because I *DO* maintain that being an athlete requires some sense of conditioning), then I think you have, right there, a perfect case for why 'esports' is indeed a sport.
It's not a substitute for getting off your ass and going to the gym, however. In fact, several of the top 'esports' personalities do maintain some sense of physical shape. It's an undeniable fact that being in shape can only benefit you, physically as well as mentally. You're a lot less likely to be exhausted after a day-long tournament if you're in good shape.
Before the Dotcom burst, there were a number of 'esports' teams getting sponsorships. After the economy tanked, the whole process slowed down a bit, but it's been an interesting barometer to notice that a lot more teams are getting sponsorships lately, some with old companies, some with new.
Also interesting is that most of the sponsorships I've seen go to teams in Europe, like the bevy of top-notch German and Swedish gaming clans. The reason for this is that gaming there is a far more common thing. Gamers view LAN tournaments as the ultimate competitive venue, because of the low latency, the presence of tournament computers that generally eliminate any framerate issues that one's own PC might have, and because there are often prizes for gatherings such as that. The close proximity and population density, combined with the greater popularity of competitive gaming in these regions leads to a lot more corporate attention.
The LAN tournament scene is only recently looking to pick up lately in the US. Before the only tournaments you could find were for Counterstrike, and generally run by either the CPL, or by the WCG (an Olympics style competition, with a limited number of entrants per country, making it very difficult to qualify). So far this year there've been 2 relatively large ones here on the West Coast, both featuring flavors of Unreal Tournament and the Battlefield series (BF:Vietnam and BF:1942), as well as Call of Duty. There are few more that I am aware of planned for the summer, as well as one in Colorado and a particularly large one in Kentucky.
All of these tournaments feature some notable prizes. The NVidia tournament featured $4000 prize machines (which I think are actually worth more like 2.5-3k, not that anyone's complaining) as well as $500 cash to the first place winners. On a more realistic level, Newegg.com held one with P4 3.2 GHz CPUs, motherboards, and a $100 gift certificate for first place.
So you can see the money flowing into these events, and the question a lot of people ask is 'Why?'. The reason companies are so interested in gaming and gamers is because video games are notorious for pushing computers to their limits. Because of this, hardcore gamers tend to seek out the highest-performance equipment they can get their hands on. This makes them perfect opinion leaders for the rest of the hardware market.
Of course there are some doubters and nay-sayers who question whether 'esports' is really a legitimate venue for competition because it doesn't involve a bunch of steroid-hyped testosterone-appealing dudes in uniforms. The simple fact, though, is that competitive venues will thrive wherever they can sustain themselves. Magic: The Gathering tournaments weren't big by accident. There were people who wanted to play it. Similarly, e-sports has been a competitive platform of its own for several years now. First with the PGL, and through various incarnations to the CPL, as well as other tournaments such as the annual World Cyber-Games (WCG) which have a HUGE following in Korea, and will be having their first event hosted outside of Korea this fall in San Francisco, and smaller tournaments such as the aforementioned NVidia tournament hosted alongside the GeForce 6800 unveiling, the Newegg tournament(s), Million-Man Lan in Kentucky, PDXLan in Portland, and so on.
If it were all a big joke, people would be laughing, but they're not. They're shelling out money to travel to these events and compete and hopefully come home with some pretty respectable prize purses.
Let me introduce you to a game called 'chess'.
Or 'go'.
Or 'shogo'.
Or 'poker'.
Have you seen how many reruns of the World Series of Poker hit ESPN2 lately? It's not just an acceptable competition venue, it's POPULAR. Silly notions like yours are losing their footwork in light of this.
What happens when someone does something illegal from his 'hotspot'?
I follow the second paragraph, but I'm a little confused on the 'news outlet' comment. If Slashdot isn't a news outlet, then:
1) What exactly does "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." mean, semantics aside?
2) Assuming the line is drawn in front of the fact that Slashdot reports news stories from other news sites, does Slashdot instead being a 'news digest' (or whatever we want to call it) really provide exemption to these standards I spoke of?
I may've been semantically misleading, but I don't think the point is lost, and I can't help but think that the confusion is trifling at best, respective to the topic at hand.
I know you were reaching for rhetorical value, here, but to address the unspoken question, if the news here is that this sort of thing does happen frequently, then it should be stated as such, not in an manner that indubitably furthers an agenda many people on this site already espouse to the point of religious fervor.
So what exactly makes this news-worthy? Is it possible that this sort of thing happens frequently? Judging by the miniscule amount of the fine in comparison to the dollar amount spent, I can't imagine why this is a significant fine (as someone else has posted, a 'disclosure oversight').
For all the griping we do about the duplicitous nature of certain 'fair and balanced' news outlets (and their ilk), it would seem we'd hold Slashdot to some sort of standard.
P.S. Yes, I know this has been hashed, rehashed, and then many times again. hash_count++