There don't seem to be many people asking questions, so I'll bite.
What exactly is Personal Audio? Your website is slashdotted, so I can't find what you make or what your business model is. But you claim not to be a patent troll. You're even willing to come to a hive of kneejerking anti-patent-trolls and answer our questions to try and convince us of this. So, if you're not one, why not? What do you make? What do you sell? What do you do?
Was Goering even shown onscreen in either of those movies? I haven't seen Schindler's List in a long time, but in Downfall he was only talked about, as he was not in Berlin at the time.
IIRC courts have ruled in the past that metadata does not require a warrant. Of course, this brouhaha might create some political impetus to change that.
If the penalty is reflected in the price of next year's line of Acer laptops, then more people will buy from Toshiba instead. "Passing it on to the consumers" only works when the entire market is passing it on, not just one company.
The "people for which the lawsuit was intended to provide justice" were minorly inconvenienced. A cheap plastic kazoo sounds pretty OK when all that happened to you was you got an unwanted text message. The entire premise of a class action lawsuit is that the harm is so negligible at an individual level that nobody would ever sue.
This is supposed to be okay, though, because "class action lawsuits are intended to punish companies, not restore damages"
Yes, yes they are. Saying it in a sarcastic tone doesn't make it less true.
Let's not forget the advanced fluginflappin or the over _200_ thonkcount on that sucker! Also, another thing that's advanced and in the know crane related talk!
A sheerleg is a floating crane - basically a flat barge with lots of ballast tanks to keep itself balanced while it lifts superheavy things. Rather than a previously-constructed ship that then has a crane stuck on top, the ship is the crane.
The number of falls is the number of times (plus one) that the cable is wrapped around a sheave (a pulley). Simple machines - a 2-fall crane can lift twice as much as a 1-fall crane, but uses a longer cable to do so. So cranes that have to lower things down to the seafloor generally have only one or two falls, while cranes for land or low-depth heavy lifting can have as many as 32.
The boom is the big ol' steel truss structure that everything hangs off of.
A note on capacities and this lift - 900 tons is a big lift, but not an amazingly big one. The average capacity of a heavy-lift mast crane is 600-800 tons in my experience, but can easily go into the thousands. Anything above 1000 is pretty sizeable, 2000 or more is pretty darn huge. The largest I've seen is 5000, the largest I can Google is 8700.
As someone who works on cranes myself, I was more interested in the lift than in the actual thing being constructed. Got any specs on that sheerleg? It looks like a monster. My eyes aren't good enough to count the number of falls, but just the boom structure has me ballparking its capacity at what, 2000 tons?
The Vogtle complex is a group of nuclear reactors in Georgia, the US state, at the border with South Carolina. There are 2 older-generation plants operating there already (1.2GW capacity each), and Georgia Power is building two more using Westinghouse's AP1000 design. These are the first new nuclear power plants built in the US since Three Mile Island.
The bottom head is, more or less, the reactor's "floor".
There's no "cometary life". TFA isn't saying that life was on comets, then the comets crashed and life jumped ship to Earth. That'd be like saying your car is powered by a fire contained in the gas tank. It's saying that the raw materials for life were on comets (fuel) and that the temperature and pressure shocks of impact (spark plug) caused them to react and form the components of life.
Whether or not Feldman is toast is irrelevant. If they convict him of having CP, and they do it without violating the Fifth, then kudos to them. The man isn't the issue, the rights are.
I swear to god if they do dailies of farming, I'll/ragequit the movie and punch the guy at the ticket counter.
Oh, don't worry. You'll get your punching in. It's directed by the guy who did Moon. So you can expect a final product that slices tropes and cliches from every other film in its genre and tries to congeal them into some sort of statement about humanity, ending with a finished product that is not only trite and overwrought, but unconscionably boring.
In other words, expect Dungeons and Dragons + Game of Thrones + How to Train Your Dragon = "Farming Dailies (But with Dragons!)"
Well, that's unfortunate for those falling-block league players. But the original post was "I find it hard to believe someone can get paid for gaming." The ability of the game's creator to shut down an unapproved league doesn't really affect the concept of people being paid to play games. Many sports are illegal by law (gladiatorial combat, for example), but that doesn't mean that nobody plays any sports - they just shift to legally-approved ones. Instead of gladiatorial games, they play ball games. Instead of unapproved falling-block leagues, they play in approved Starcraft leagues. It may be a corporate-owned sport, but it's still a sport and people are still getting paid, which was the original question.
And the "most games" that you're describing wouldn't have pro scenes. AFAIK there are no professional angry birds players out there. The latency argument is why most of the big-name events are done over a LAN rather than the internet.
As for patching, I don't see how that's a bad thing. Different, yes. Personally, I like that games have become dynamic. Chess hasn't changed in hundreds of years, and so its strategies are pretty well thought out by this point. The grandmasters of today simply build on the grandmasters of previous centuries. With a dynamic game, older strategies may or may not still be relevant, based on how the rules have changed. Improvisation takes a much larger role, and new strategies are constantly being developed. You may think that makes the game worse - I like it better. But in the end it's just a different style of game.
You would say "ehh, maybe not", and others would not. Hence my other point - if you don't think it's a sport, don't watch it.
As for physically challenging, do you consider fast-twitch reflexes to be physical attributes? Gamers spend hours a day honng their reflexes. No, it's not a test of brute strength, but it still counts.
But I see a difference between getting paid to be good at a mentally challenging game and being good at playing a game where you "blow stuff up".
And there's your problem. You don't understand the competition involved. Gaming can be "challenging", both mentally and physically. Is it as mentally challenging as chess? Well, that's a topic ripe for debate, given the amount of strategy and improvisation involved in many multiplayer games. Is it as physically demanding as football or boxing or any other athletic activity? No, but then neither is skeet shooting, which many also consider a sport.
Anyway, the whole point boils down to the question: are people willing to watch someone else engage in an activity? Competitive chess? Yes. Competitive crocheting? Probably not. Competitive gaming? Apparently so. If you don't like it, why do you care?
I don't know about whatever game that 4Kings plays. However, League of Legends has a functioning league, complete with player salaries, endorsement deals, ads, and yes, a large and loyal viewer audience. And don't get me started on the Koreans.
The "akin to bingo" system is true when there's no audience. But as gaming grows more mainstream, the audience comes with it. With the audience come all the other bells and whistles you mentioned with regard to baseball.
Slashdot Mirror
He said duck tape. It's rather more expensive than duct tape, since they have to catch and render the ducks.
Oh lord, I can hear it now. "They don't even have to immigrate anymore to take our jobs!"
There don't seem to be many people asking questions, so I'll bite.
What exactly is Personal Audio? Your website is slashdotted, so I can't find what you make or what your business model is. But you claim not to be a patent troll. You're even willing to come to a hive of kneejerking anti-patent-trolls and answer our questions to try and convince us of this. So, if you're not one, why not? What do you make? What do you sell? What do you do?
All these comments and nobody has yet commented on "Miltary" robots? Slashdot, I'm ashamed of you!
Who needs a restore function? You can restore the entire internet with a camera and a cat.
Was Goering even shown onscreen in either of those movies? I haven't seen Schindler's List in a long time, but in Downfall he was only talked about, as he was not in Berlin at the time.
IIRC courts have ruled in the past that metadata does not require a warrant. Of course, this brouhaha might create some political impetus to change that.
If the penalty is reflected in the price of next year's line of Acer laptops, then more people will buy from Toshiba instead. "Passing it on to the consumers" only works when the entire market is passing it on, not just one company.
This is supposed to be okay, though, because "class action lawsuits are intended to punish companies, not restore damages"
Yes, yes they are. Saying it in a sarcastic tone doesn't make it less true.
Here's an explanation from the last time the media tried to report on time-cloaking. I think it came off a little more clearly.
Let's not forget the advanced fluginflappin or the over _200_ thonkcount on that sucker! Also, another thing that's advanced and in the know crane related talk!
A sheerleg is a floating crane - basically a flat barge with lots of ballast tanks to keep itself balanced while it lifts superheavy things. Rather than a previously-constructed ship that then has a crane stuck on top, the ship is the crane.
The number of falls is the number of times (plus one) that the cable is wrapped around a sheave (a pulley). Simple machines - a 2-fall crane can lift twice as much as a 1-fall crane, but uses a longer cable to do so. So cranes that have to lower things down to the seafloor generally have only one or two falls, while cranes for land or low-depth heavy lifting can have as many as 32.
The boom is the big ol' steel truss structure that everything hangs off of.
A note on capacities and this lift - 900 tons is a big lift, but not an amazingly big one. The average capacity of a heavy-lift mast crane is 600-800 tons in my experience, but can easily go into the thousands. Anything above 1000 is pretty sizeable, 2000 or more is pretty darn huge. The largest I've seen is 5000, the largest I can Google is 8700.
Huge-structure guy here. Guys like you are the people making sure that the things made by guys like me don't spin out of control and kill people.
We like guys like you.
As someone who works on cranes myself, I was more interested in the lift than in the actual thing being constructed. Got any specs on that sheerleg? It looks like a monster. My eyes aren't good enough to count the number of falls, but just the boom structure has me ballparking its capacity at what, 2000 tons?
The Vogtle complex is a group of nuclear reactors in Georgia, the US state, at the border with South Carolina. There are 2 older-generation plants operating there already (1.2GW capacity each), and Georgia Power is building two more using Westinghouse's AP1000 design. These are the first new nuclear power plants built in the US since Three Mile Island.
The bottom head is, more or less, the reactor's "floor".
There's no "cometary life". TFA isn't saying that life was on comets, then the comets crashed and life jumped ship to Earth. That'd be like saying your car is powered by a fire contained in the gas tank. It's saying that the raw materials for life were on comets (fuel) and that the temperature and pressure shocks of impact (spark plug) caused them to react and form the components of life.
Whether or not Feldman is toast is irrelevant. If they convict him of having CP, and they do it without violating the Fifth, then kudos to them. The man isn't the issue, the rights are.
Screw caves, just wear a tinfoil hat!
I swear to god if they do dailies of farming, I'll /ragequit the movie and punch the guy at the ticket counter.
Oh, don't worry. You'll get your punching in. It's directed by the guy who did Moon. So you can expect a final product that slices tropes and cliches from every other film in its genre and tries to congeal them into some sort of statement about humanity, ending with a finished product that is not only trite and overwrought, but unconscionably boring.
In other words, expect Dungeons and Dragons + Game of Thrones + How to Train Your Dragon = "Farming Dailies (But with Dragons!)"
Well, that's unfortunate for those falling-block league players. But the original post was "I find it hard to believe someone can get paid for gaming." The ability of the game's creator to shut down an unapproved league doesn't really affect the concept of people being paid to play games. Many sports are illegal by law (gladiatorial combat, for example), but that doesn't mean that nobody plays any sports - they just shift to legally-approved ones. Instead of gladiatorial games, they play ball games. Instead of unapproved falling-block leagues, they play in approved Starcraft leagues. It may be a corporate-owned sport, but it's still a sport and people are still getting paid, which was the original question.
Um...
Yes. So what?
As for patching, I don't see how that's a bad thing. Different, yes. Personally, I like that games have become dynamic. Chess hasn't changed in hundreds of years, and so its strategies are pretty well thought out by this point. The grandmasters of today simply build on the grandmasters of previous centuries. With a dynamic game, older strategies may or may not still be relevant, based on how the rules have changed. Improvisation takes a much larger role, and new strategies are constantly being developed. You may think that makes the game worse - I like it better. But in the end it's just a different style of game.
You would say "ehh, maybe not", and others would not. Hence my other point - if you don't think it's a sport, don't watch it.
As for physically challenging, do you consider fast-twitch reflexes to be physical attributes? Gamers spend hours a day honng their reflexes. No, it's not a test of brute strength, but it still counts.
But I see a difference between getting paid to be good at a mentally challenging game and being good at playing a game where you "blow stuff up".
And there's your problem. You don't understand the competition involved. Gaming can be "challenging", both mentally and physically. Is it as mentally challenging as chess? Well, that's a topic ripe for debate, given the amount of strategy and improvisation involved in many multiplayer games. Is it as physically demanding as football or boxing or any other athletic activity? No, but then neither is skeet shooting, which many also consider a sport.
Anyway, the whole point boils down to the question: are people willing to watch someone else engage in an activity? Competitive chess? Yes. Competitive crocheting? Probably not. Competitive gaming? Apparently so. If you don't like it, why do you care?
The "akin to bingo" system is true when there's no audience. But as gaming grows more mainstream, the audience comes with it. With the audience come all the other bells and whistles you mentioned with regard to baseball.
People got paid to play chess even in your day. What's the difference?