That's one good thing that comes from patents. Public disclosure of the ideas.
Or, as in this case, mostly pointless obfuscation of ideas previously disclosed by other, less greedy, people.
I wasn't familiar with the specifics so I found this Wiki page. Apparently P visas are a general category for athletes, entertainers and their families who either represent something culturally unique, are part of an exchange program, or are internationally recognized (the main kind, P-1).
According the LA Times article linked in the Wiki page, programers have received P1-A visas specifically - the same subcategory as for any athlete.
No, that's exactly the interest of his example.
Yup, thanks.
given it was a (member of) the Samba development team
Eunuchswear's reply hit the nail on the head.
reversed engineered the protocol.
More like an API implementation than reverse engineering. All he did was use telnet to send plaintext commands like 'help' and 'clone' and pipe the output to files. The names of the commands were taken from the output of 'help' or the kernel mailing list.
Heatmaps of kills (killer location), deaths, assists, cap points
Not just for commentary - data like that can be really helpful for mapmakers and balance teams.
as long as their governments (and the governments of the countries they will visit) recognize them as sports
And many people are probably unaware that the United States does recognize eSports, and there are at least a few dozen progamers living in the United States on athlete visas.
Second, as to the amount of skill required...
For Starcraft in particular there is also a very apt comparison to chess, which is usually taken seriously and has at times been considered a sport. Of course, unlike chess, in SC it matters how well you can move the pieces. SC also has more strategic depth and a virtually infinite number of possible unique games.
I actually found my chess had improved considerably just from moving up to Gold in SC2.
Whilst I'll give you some skill is involved
More than "some." Think chess, but with about 100 times as much strategic depth, an infinite number of possible unique games and it matters how well you can move the pieces.
Bitkeeper was also available for free
Only to kernel developers.
make that just happen by breaking the rules
You can't break a license agreement to which you aren't a party. If your opinion was widespread, Samba wouldn't exist.
specifically they reverse-engineered the Bitkeeper protocol
I'm sure typing 'help' at the telnet prompt was a real strain on Tridge's gray cells.
30% is just about the average in the Western world - nothing special about this particular group in this regard. It's a severely under appreciated problem when you consider the immense cost in DALY or YLD.
World Health Organization (WHO) states that depression is the leading cause of disability as measured by Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease.
A Fair Use exception will allow them (if they choose) to effectively exclude APIs without threatening to upturn industry expectations generally.
Unfortunately, fair use claims are judged on a case-by-case basis. Even if Google prevails on this issue, API implementation will be too risky for individual programmers or small companies to undertake.
Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.
