Comment Palin could come up with more believable numbers (Score 0) 422

by halo112358 on Saturday November 15, 2008 @03:43AM (#25769169) Attached to: Independent Dev Reports Over 80% Piracy Rate On DRM-Free Game

Or, "These numbers are so crap they should be attributed to Palin so we can all recognize them for the joke they are."

These numbers don't take DHCP addresses or multiboxing into account at all, in fact these two factors inflate the piracy percentage to dominating levels. I bought the game through steam and play it on two machines, according to 2D Boy's data collection method this means that they have a 50% piracy rate just from my copy (1 sale, 2 addresses observed.)

Now let me throw a couple of things into the mix, one of the machines has a dynamic address DSL connection, the address changes daily (roughly every 24hrs, and every DSL modem reboot). If I play the game daily for two weeks on this machine it means that there are an additional 14 addresses added to their tally for a grand total of one sale and 15 unique addresses (aka, pirated copies), all of this due to me playing my legitimate copy. This inflates the piracy rate of my single copy to 1 sold and 15 pirated, ie: 93.333% piracy.

This method and their numbers are so much bullshit it hurts me to even think about this. You could probably divide their figure (92%) by about 5 or 6 and have something more reasonable to work with, but it's really going to depend on how many dynamic addresses they're observing. I'd estimate they're wrong by a factor of 5 here.

Submission + - Bill Gates' Wish is Homeland Security's Command

Submitted by

theodp

on Saturday April 12, 2008 @06:33PM

theodp writes: "PC World reports the Dept. of Homeland Security has extended the time foreign graduates of U.S. colleges can stay in the country and work to almost two-and-a-half years, an 'emergency' change that drew kudos from Microsoft and other H-1B visa stakeholders. Looks like when Bill Gates says 'Jump,' the government asks 'How high?' Bill Gates' Congressional Testimony, March 12, 2008: 'Extending OPT from 12 to 29 months would help to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage. This only requires action by the Executive Branch, and Congress and this Committee should strongly urge the Department of Homeland Security to take such action immediately.' DHS Press Release, April 4, 2008: 'The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released today an interim final rule extending the period of Optional Practical Training (OPT) from 12 to 29 months for qualified F-1 non-immigrant students.'"

Submission + - Boeing Dreamliner Turns Into Nightmareliner (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, 2008 @01:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: It's not that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner wondercraft may be unsafe or vulnerable to hacker attacks. At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state. The 787's carbon-fiber construction and next-generation technology have pushed back their delivery schedule once again, this time requiring a redesign of the plane's wingbox. Airlines will have to wait 18 more months to get it delivered, which is an extremely serious blow to the credibility of the company and their financial standing, as they would have to pay penalties to the buyers of more than 850 of these planes. And we thought Airbus had problems.

Supreme Court Continues to Address Patent Concerns 78

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @01:01PM from the still-a-long-way-to-go dept.

The Supreme Court has taken on another possibly landscape-changing patent case that will determine if patent holders are able to sue everyone up and down the food chain for a patent infringement. "This case, officially between LG and Quanta, really concerns the question of how many times patent holders can get a cut of any component found violating a patent. Currently, patent holders will often sue up and down the food chain. So, if you happen to have a patent on a component within a motor that is used in automobile wipers, you could sue the motor maker, the wiper maker and the auto manufacturer -- and get all three to pay, even though the same product is used throughout the supply chain. This case will look at whether or not it makes sense to allow for that type of double, triple or quadruple dipping."

Submission + - BBC trust to listen to OSC about iPlayer (digital-lifestyles.info)

Submitted by

Virgil Tibbs

on Friday July 13, 2007 @09:44PM

Virgil Tibbs writes: "With the Launch of the BBC's iPlayer imminent, the BBC trust has agreed to hear the Open Source Consortium concerns regarding the BBC iPlayer's tie in with Microsoft's software. The move by the BBC to use Windows Media DRM & their apparent lack of commitment towards other platforms has caused outrage in many circles and prompted several online petitions."

Submission + - Vista makes forensic exam of PC easier for lawyers (abanet.org)

Submitted by Katharine on Friday July 13, 2007 @07:41PM

Katharine writes: Jason Krause, a legal affairs writer for the American Bar Association's 'ABA Journal' reports in the July issue that Windows Vista will be a boon for those looking for forensic evidence of wrongdoing on defendants' PC's and a nightmare for defendants who hoped their past computer activities would not be revealed. Krause quotes attorney R. Lee Barrett, 'From a [legal] defense perspective, [Vista] scares me to death. One of the things I have a hard time educating my clients on is the volume of data that's now discoverable.' The fun is primarily attributable to Shadow Copy, TxF and Instant Search.

Submission + - PHP 4 end of life announcement

Submitted by perbert on Friday July 13, 2007 @06:58PM

perbert writes: The PHP development team announced that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. Critical security fixes will be made available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. For documentation on migration for PHP 4 to PHP 5, there is a migration guide. There is additional information available in the PHP 5.0 to PHP 5.1 and PHP 5.1 to PHP 5.2 migration guides as well.