Sure, there are pirates out there that do the "cracking" for the thrills. But there are a ton of people out there that will buy a game, and if it doesn't have DRM, they'll just let their friends install it, too, maybe even upload it to a torrent site.

I don't think DRM is the answer to piracy, since that is obviously ineffective. But DRM-free games would still end up being pirated.

Yes, simple CD keys ... that can be studied and then cracked. Don't you remember all the CD key generators from a few years ago?

The article gives the example of Witcher 2. It says it's ironic that the most leaked version of the game was the DRM version. But is that really ironic? Witcher 2 sold 1.1 M copies for the PC in its first 7 months. It only sold 40 k DRM-free copies through GOG, which would the crackers most likely find to crack?

Besides, if there were no DRM for a big title like that, it stands to reason that there would be just as many if not more leaked copies available on torrent sites. What they really need to do to prove their case is get a publisher to release their AAA title on nothing but GOG, then they would be able to see the true effects of DRM-free games on piracy.

Did slashdot somehow redirect me to reddit without me realizing it?

There should be a study conducted on how all of these studies affect our mental health.

I would say the defining feature of a smartphone would be the ability to install apps to expand its capabilities.

I graduate this year with my BS in Computer Science and I already have one offer with possibly more to come. So it will be a VAST improvement over my part-time jobs I've been working to get myself through school. The only downside is that now student loan payments will start.

Kepler-22b is about 600 light years away from us. Meaning that any attempts at contacting this race would take at least 1200 years to accomplish since we can only transmit at the speed of light.

Of course it is possible that if there is an intelligent form of life on Kepler-22b, they could have discovered our planet and have been trying to contact us for over 600 years. That would be interesting, and that is actually what SETI is set up for, it listens for signals that couldn't occur naturally and therefore would be from another life form.

Would that mean that beach-front properties would start arming themselves with machine guns and electric fences to keep the raft-people from coming ashore?

But especially this "answer":

"If you got this right -- (b) Captain Morgan Bateson, USS Bozeman -- without the Internet, you should get a trophy. And a hooker."

It was pretty easy since they only listed two ships from the series including the obviously-wrong answer of the USS Enterprise. It would have been a harder question if they had you choose between ships that were actually in TNG like the USS Pegasus, USS Aries, or the USS Excalibur.

Think what that percentage would be if they supported Linux, too.

This is what level 1 Tech Support (probably in India) told me about the outtage: "PriscillaBCBU: Yes, we are receiving reports from the site inaccessible when using Comcast connection. Currently, we are already fixing it here in our end. Our network engineers are working on it as of this moment. PriscillaBCBU: The pirate bay issue is also a problem from other Internet service provider. We have been receiving reports that they also experience this issue and it is happening worldwide."

Here's an official response from NCDOT when asked about the conduct of Mr. Asshat aka Kevin Lacy:

Dear JMonty42:

Transportation decisions - especially those involving safety - need to be made based on data and the decisions of educated, trained and licensed professional engineers. Nothing should ever come before public safety.

We value public input - we seek it at every opportunity. But when the research and data show that one option is safe and another is less safe, NCDOT is always going to choose the safest option and we make no apologies for that.

Our engineers have met extensively over the last year with Falls of Neuse neighbors to discuss the project, always with the primary emphasis on safety. And we have made significant changes based on their input.

We stand behind the work of Mr. Lacy. He is a licensed traffic engineer. His initial findings were supported by the engineering consultants to the City of Raleigh. When the North Raleigh group undertook a response to the city's report, our department told the group we would consider an analysis if it came from an independent licensed engineer.

Instead, the group produced a technical document that appeared to be in violation of N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors standards for public safety. Mr. Lacy was concerned enough that he asked the Board what he should do, and he was instructed to file a report with the Board. As a licensed professional, Mr. Lacy was obligated to do so.

NCDOT Contact Us

This definitely isn't the first time this has been done. Maybe it's the first time anybody has done it with an unnecessarily large cluster of 3000 (all infected) computers. I also think this study is flawed and mostly pointless. First of all, command and control-style botnets are getting easier and easier to mitigate. The real threat is from peer-to-peer botnets. The most useful research taking place as of late is not being done in a closed environment cut off from the rest of the world on a botnet that hasn't been a threat for several months. That research is being done by taking over or infiltrating known botnets that are using newer peer-to-peer botnet protocols [T. Holz, M. Steiner, F. Dahl, E. Biersack, and F. Freiling. "Measurements and Mitigation of Peer-to-Peer-based Botnets: A Case Study on Storm Worm." In USENIX Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats, 2008.] and [B. Stone-Gross, M. Cova, L. Cavallaro, B. Gilbert, M. Szydlowski, R. Kemmerer, C. Kruegel, and G. Vigna. "Your Botnet is My Botnet: Analysis of a Botnet Takeover." Technical report, University of California, May 2009.] Also, instead of infected every single computer on the cluster, they should have studied more about the ways the botnet spreads by only infecting 25% or so of the network. Other useful projects related to peer-to-peer botnets is in trying to be one step ahead of the botnet developers. These kind of projects predict what the new peer-to-peer botnet protocols will be so they can better protect computers against being infected by them [Günther Starnberger, Christopher Kruegel, and Engin Kirda. "Overbot: A Botnet Protocol Based on Kademlia." In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm’08), pages 1–9, 2008.] I just think this "research" project is getting more press than it should while others that are doing more aren't getting as much.