You might also want to take a walk down the block or toss a rock to make sure it wasn't just a painted backdrop.

I'd bet good money that it was Peter Jackson himself. In the LOTR his makeup guys knew he wanted that one 'John Wayne' Orc to be gruesome, and they actually tried to overshoot what Peter Jackson expected. Little did they know that Peter Jackson of "Dead Alive (Braindead)" fame was still alive inside Big Budget PJ. He approved it. Since then, you have seen the costumes for the grotesques go beyond the realms of good taste and into comically aweful. Just look at how the orc costumes changed from Fellowship to The Hobbit (before they went CGI), the Hobbit 'main-bad' orc costumes were so far over the top that they had to ditch them for CGI because they looked horrible with the higher framerate/quality cameras BBPJ was using. Personally I think the only reason people think the costumes were awesome was because the CGI was so bad.

Seriously, take a side by side look at LOTR-Lurtz and the Hobbit-Orc costumes and it's night and day.

Suspension of disbelief is a challenge and probably more important to maintain in a fantasy than general fiction. A story must maintain internal consistency with it's own tone and rules. If you tell me that a dragon can fly and breath fire, well then I'll believe you, say Elves exist and can make pineapple smoothies by snapping their fingers, and as long as you don't have one of your Elves die of starvation because he didn't remember about the smoothie trick, it will work. The magic wasn't a problem in the Hobbit, it was the tone. The movie constantly shifted between extreme slapstick humor, to somber memorials of beauty forever lost, back to grossout gags, sudden videogame action, and into gritty graphic violence. You can't do that and expect to keep the audience. You have to pick something and stick with it, otherwise we don't know what movie we are watching.

So let's say I'm working on something as an amateur hobby. How much of my own personal money will such a lawsuit cost? Just give me a ballpark estimate and let me know if it is less than the cost of a small single family home.

Go to usajobs.gov or the FBI's website.

I don't think lack of visibility is their problem here. I've entertained moving over to the FBI, but I'm trying to get out of the DC region.

I'm not so sure. How many cases end in capitulation due to lack of funds?

Never tried reaching behind the computer trying to plug in a USB peripheral have you?

Space reefer madness!

Microgravity has an odd side effect of causing astronauts to temporarily lose their sense of smell.

What is being purchased in a buyout doesn't have to be what was profitable to the original company. Consider the classic farm example.

A farmer is making a living with a decent $10,000 yearly profit on his 100 acres. He provides the local community with fresh produce, pays his taxes, and is putting away a decent amount into his savings. By all accounts, his business is doing well. He then receives an offer to buy his farm, as-is, for $3,000,000. The farm is sold.

However, the company that purchased the farm lets the equipment rust, the fields go fallow, and the barn collapse. Why would they purchase a profitable farm if all they were going to do is let weeds grow and shut it down. The answer comes later, when 400 future housing plots are identified for sale at $400,000 each. Turns out, while the farm was profitable, the land was worth MUCH more as a housing development. Rather than earn $10,000/year in profit through hard work, the purchasing company turned a $3,000,000 purchase into a $160,000,000 real estate deal.

The farm could have continued, as it was making a profit, but it wasn't making nearly as much of a profit as it could have made. (not that I like farm's beind developed, but I think this is a good example to demonstrate why seemingly profitable enterprises get shut down after a buyout)

Yes. The 'how' is very important.

If a plane suddenly crashes mid-flight, and I'm due to fly on that same model next week, I'd be concerned. If the crash was due to a fundamental flaw in the fuselage, I'm cancelling my flight. If it turns out the crash was due to the plane flying over rebel-held lands and being shot by a missile, my concern about my flight from Maryland to Vermont is greatly reduced.

Until I had my first child, it was quite the experiment. Lots of room for error too. But I suppose it is better to leave things to chance, and hope on that first ultrasound that everything looks to be developing properly.

How can you claim that they price older games at lower than used game prices?

Back in the cartridge years, I was able to pick up games by the BOX load from flea markets or yard sales.

Competition simply doesn't exist in a market where things are under copyright. As there is no compulsory licensing model for software, it's not like you can purchase your product from a different supplier. If that were the case, I'd be able to play Heroes VI and not have to do business with Ubisoft's Uplay crap. (or Origin for EA games, etc)

Consider that I wanted to buy a game for my wife, but that game was no longer offered for sale because original company went out of business and was sold. Under the no-resale model, I'm SOL. Unless I happen to get lucky and the company that owns a portion of the sold company (they are never sold 100% to a single party) feels like monetizing some IP, and spends the time to collect all of the other IP fragments, and remarket the game, I don't have the option to buy it anymore.

With the resale model, I could hop down to my local gamestop, or craigslist, or secondhand store and try my luck there.