Well then you're in luck, because keeping a gaming PC capable of playing the latest games is less painful than it has ever been. Mid-grade CPUs and motherboards from 3-5 years ago are still perfectly capable of running any new game. Ram and HDDs are dirt cheap. The only thing you'll be sinking much money into is most likely a graphics card, and even that isn't too bad if you shop carefully. Usually the best value is a current-gen mid-grade card that you can pick up for $150-200, and you won't need to upgrade it more than about every 2-3 years. And this situation is only going to keep getting better.

So then we should take the typical cost of filing such a lawsuit (including lawyer fees) and multiply it by 750 for each individual they wrongfully included in this lawsuit. That's what they should pay for attempting this bullshit. And then they still need to go back and do it all correctly if they actually want to proceed with the lawsuits.

The only statistic that actually matters for this is: how many accidents are caused by drunk drivers with BAC at .05-.08. Until I know that, I can neither support nor oppose this new law.

Your point is good, but this is almost certainly incorrect. The soybeans that Bowman bought were presumably sold to the grain elevator company by other farmers who had grown the beans from Monsanto seed. (That's the purpose of grain elevators.) The only soybeans with the Monsanto gene modifications that are legal for planting would be ones specifically authorized by Monsanto, either grown by them or by specific authorized farmers. So if the grain elevator does sell legal Monsanto seedstock, those soybeans would be completely separate from the ones Bowman purchased, and the grain elevator wouldn't "pay the patent fees" so to speak, but rather just purchase the seedstock directly from Monsanto.

That may have helped ice the unanimous SCOTUS decision, but that's not what the lawsuit was really about. The lawsuit was about planting unauthorized Monsanto seeds, pure and simple. Monsanto is constantly suing farmers who never buy or plant any kind of Monsanto seeds merely because some Monsanto seeds show up in their fields from cross-pollination. In some of these cases Monsanto is even suspected of causing the cross-pollination so they can bring a lawsuit.

http://www.dailytech.com/Monsanto+Defeats+Small+Farmers+in+Critical+Bioethics+Class+Action+Suit/article24118.htm

There's a big fight going on between organic farmers and Monsanto over this issue, because the organic farmers don't want the Monsanto seed at all.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/17/local/la-me-gs-organic-farmers-sue-monsanto-to-stop-patent-suits-20120217

A quick google search shows dozens of articles about this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+cross+pollination+lawsuit

So you think the people who run the grain elevator should be required to monitor all the potentially-Monsanto seed they sell 24/7 after it's sold, until it's used? Really? Or did you just not think before you posted?

They didn't sue the elevator because they did nothing wrong. They were selling the soybeans for 'feed, milling, and other uses'. Not for seed to be planted. You really can't do anything else useful with soybeans, so there you go.

Actually, no.

From TFA:

Nothing indicates that they sold him the soybeans to be planted. They sold them for feed, milling, or other uses, but he decided to plant them instead.

Which to me just highlights how bad it is to allow something self-replicating (like plant seeds) to be patented. You can buy the seeds and grow the plants, but the 'fruit' you get from the plants (which are just new seeds) you're not allowed to plant. Frankly, it's stupid IMO, and one more reason patent law needs a major overhaul.

The only time I have fewer than 20 tabs open is for a few minutes right after I opened my browser, which is pretty rare.

The only time I have ever had one of my PCs infected was when I intentionally got my isolated test machine infected. Yes, I use Windows 7, and I haven't used an antivirus in years. Every so often (3-6 months) I'll update Malwarebytes and run a scan, but it never finds anything. My firewall also doesn't show any unauthorized activity. Of course, I also use Firefox and Chrome almost exclusively for browsing, and I'm very careful what sites I go to, and what I download. A little knowledge and smart browsing is way more effective than any antivirus.

Yeah, I haven't seen the long-term results either. Despite having exceptional reading and math ability at that age my income is still shit, decades later.

Well that's the great thing about Eve. The way it's designed, a brand new player can be effective. Not as effective as a player who's played for years, no, but still effective.

I started playing Eve a couple years ago, and my second day ever playing, I got invited into a fleet made up of nothing but complete newbies and a fleet leader who'd been playing maybe 6-8 months. There were about a dozen of us, and we headed out into low-security space (good PvP area for small groups) and proceeded to kick some ass. We killed more ships than we lost, and every ship we killed was worth more than all the ships we lost put together.

Focused training for about 18-24 months is sufficient to get you to an expert status on just about any ship battleship-size or smaller.

That being said, Eve does have its shortcomings. For me, the gameplay itself ended up being just too boring. It's all just click-to-move and then click to activate or deactivate modules. The strategy and tactics (both in warefare and economics) is where the real fun is at, so if you enjoy that kind of thing you may just find Eve is something you really like. In the end I just wasn't enjoying it enough to justify the subscription cost, so I finally quit after a year and a half.

Yeah, I don't know why more real MMOs don't try that model. Even ArenaNet ditched it in GW2, and guess what... it cost them customers (and I'm one of them). Sure, there's a few players out there that will quit playing if they can't keep getting better gear, but I've seen online polls where the overwhelming majority of players indicated they'd be just as happy going after cosmetic upgrades as power upgrades. I think the players with the obsessive need for continous gear upgrades are a niche group.

And there's so many upsides to a system like that. Endgame content never gets obsolete. Gear level never separates you from your friends, once you both hit end-game. You're not restricted to a small set of "relevant" endgame content you can participate in. And the list goes on. I really don't see any downsides.

That's why making an MMO dependent on gear progression is a terrible idea, IMO. Old players get tired of constantly having their gear reset and/or having to keep replacing their previous best gear, and new players hate being behind the curve.

Much better IMO to use sidegrades and cosmetic awesomeness as rewards to keep people playing. This also keeps old end-game content relevant, without making it mandatory.

That looks pretty cool. I just preregistered. Thanks.