I discovered this same relationship (empirically) while dicking around learning Scheme. I don't know what journal these guys got published in but I doubt it's anything more than a journal of exposition. The result is 'obvious' to anyone with mathematical training and I can think of at least two ways to prove it off the top of my head.

Maybe if your heart actually went out to him, this whole crisis could be averted in time?

I think you were correct. In fact in the official rules it states in big capital letters:

NO PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD NECESSARY. A PURCHASE OR DOWNLOAD OF ANY KIND WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING.

Seems pretty clear to me. The contest is to celebrate the 1,000,000,000 download, and it ends at that point, but it's just a random draw beyond that.

It takes a really strong streak of paranoia and delusion for that argument to not make sense to you. Yes, in general, companies are better able to deliver services and maintain a high capacity when you pay them for it. I know data is just this one cable running into your house for you, but believe it or not it takes some mighty powerful infrastructure to stream porn into millions of houses 24 hours a day.

I think the problem is your math, not their service. 60 MB for 1 hour does not equal 1 GB in 4 hours, not even close -- a gig is 1024 megabytes.

Assuming your estimate of 60 MB per hour is correct, their 100GB/month account will let you play Left4Dead for 56 hours a day without paying any overcharge fees. Is that enough for you?

William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, which much later starred Leonardo DiCaprio, who was in Critters 3 with Geoffrey Blake, who was in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon. I win :)

Hmm, okay, I see all of your points, I guess it just never occured to me that the profit margin on a $2000+ computer is less than even the total cost of a copy of Office (pretending it's 100% profit). It seems like that profit margin would have to be actually SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the cost of Office since obviously the Mac:Office ratio is not actually 1:1 as I assumed for argument's sake in the original post.

I think the real question is why a structural engineering firm puts out ads on high school tests... lots of 16-year-olds contracting bridges and highrises these days?

Maybe I'm being naive here, but how could this possibly be true? Even if every single Mac owner bought a copy of Office for every single Mac they owned, wouldn't Microsoft still be making less money by virtue of the fact that Office is (hopefully? I haven't checked) cheaper than the Mac itself?

I don't understand... clearly the charges are just the first thing they could think of to charge this terrible woman with, because the actual wrong committed (driving a girl to suicide) is not explicitly illegal anywhere. So they chose... 'computer fraud' and violating MySpace TOS?

Hello!? This is a 30+-year-old woman lying about her identity in order to start a romantic relationship with a 13-year-old girl! Of course her intent was not sexual but if Lori Drew's HUSBAND had perpetrated this exact same "prank" I guarantee the not-quite-accurate charge would have been sexually soliciting a minor, not breaking a EULA!

The jury is sympathetic enough in this case that I think this charge could definitely pass...