If you know anything about how Salesforce is doing right now, you know this guy is the real tool. That dumpster fire of a company seems to trundle on only because they've bought (and ruined) so many better products

Is it? What do you pay for?

It's definitely *economically* roundabout, but bandwidth is pretty cheap, so it's mostly about stringing everything together at scales large enough to matter.

Like: if a single phone can generate $.12 per hour ($.004 for a 2 minute stream), I'd expect a box of 1k crappy used phones (maybe $50k, generously, and taking up around 50 cubic ft - so a pallette or two) to generate $120/hr or $2880/day. You could probably string it together for probably less than $10k, so then you're just talking power (maybe 6kw, so $1 or $2 of the profit), bandwidth (~100-300mbps downstream, maybe $100/mo) and employees ($300k in salaries is about $825/day - probably some cheap employees to watch the phones 24/7, 1 expensive one to automate everything). Also rent (lets call it $60/day).

Certainly fudging and forgetting some things there (not to mention complications in getting around anti-bot measures) but it doesn't feel hard to net a profit inside of 6 months. The numbers above suggest about 2-3.

Given this is about laundering money - and so profit is entirely secondary - that's not too bad.

(Numbers above all from basic Google searches)

I've seen the same thing, though it's worth pointing out that it's really easy to tell at a concert who's under aged for someone around that age range.

That said, it's good to know that the GP was staring long enough to not only go on such a long and passionate rant, but to also determine whether or not they were wearing pads.

Actually, from what I remember from my neuroscience lectures on the subject, there's an effect on feminine and masculine behavior in the womb based on specific chemicals received in utero that can be affected by the person you're sharing the womb with.

In rats, it's been shown that exposure to estrogen in the womb causes a significant increase in homosexual mounting behavior in females later in life, due to the change in brain chemistry that results.

I'd have to look up the slides again to see why this happens, as well as any specifics, but the point is that the imbalance in hormones caused by having a sibling in the womb can affect the end sexual orientation, which may possibly explain why there's such a big difference between the second two percentages.

you realize, of course, that they paid into it to, right?

Maybe not as much, but that's due to a number of factors beyond them simply not paying into the social security fund, so it's not entirely justified to say that they're stealing from the sweat of our brows.

Nice tinfoil hat you've got there.

Does that honestly not seem just a teensey bit too elaborate to be realistic to you?

Nah, doesn't work.

You'd have to devise a system where the server knows where you are at any point in time, rather than a system where the user's computer simply asks for objects at intervals, meaning that, for your system to work, the servers would have to be able to sustain near mmo levels of bandwidth, which is ridiculous-expensive for something that will still be cracked in a month. The only workable methods to have it store item types/locations server side is to have the user's computer ask at certain intervals, which will require about one play through depending on the game for the hackers to get every item down, to have the computer know where items are, but not which items they are, or vice versa, in which case the hacker has half the information and only needs to figure out the second half systematically, or to piss off all customers without a reliable high bandwidth, low latency connection to the server, as well as any who have any sense of moral decency whatsoever.

+1 sane.

I understand the whole sense of outrage from such a large number of people pirating copies, and I can see why that would be frustrating, but, at the end of the day, what you care about is SALES, not pirated copies.

What you should be asking is: Is the game profitable, and is there any way we can make it more profitable, not how can we reduce piracy. I'll admit that, at first, making more money and reducing piracy seem to go hand in hand, but not only are most pirates not going to pay for your stuff, for whatever reason, but pissing off legitimate customers with drm more restrictive than disk checks, serial numbers, etc. will only end up hurting your bottom line, instead of earning more money.

If you really think restrictive DRM is justified, look at how horribly Spore sold, compared to the initial hype surrounding it, compared to the amount of money spent developing the DRM scheme that caused that bucket of shit to come raining down. In the end, anyone who advocates sacrificing the bottom line over some sort of moral outrage or sense of unfairness should probably be removed from any decision making position, because when they aren't, it hurts everyone involved.

Actually, this seems more like proof that the guy behind Duke is, in fact, a sadistic douche.

You really probably have to be, after supporting such a hyped game for so long, just to disappoint fans again and again before the entire project explodes spectacularly in its leaders' collective face.

God also knows that new technology never stretches beyond it's original setup as it matures in age.

At the U of M, Linux is only used in the computer science department. It's mentioned here and there other places, and, obviously, everything they have for public use (wi-fi, etc) is more or less required to work with linux, less they face the wrath of the computer science department, but otherwise, there's no mention of it.

Admittedly, Pidgin does crash with ridiculous frequency, but this problem is limited mostly to Linux (in my experience) and is only really a problem in a few areas (most notably, email notifications).

It only takes a half second to boot on either of my computers, and it's never crashed while I'm not using it or messaging someone, so I really don't care enough to switch to something that's not OSS.

Hey, if you're the one who has such a big problem with advertisements that you won't sit through them even after buying the game, that's your problem.

Now, that doesn't change the fact that many companies cross the line into douchiness when dealing with ads, and a certain amount of customer-outrage is deserved on their part, but I find it silly that someone can be so bothered by something as stupid as an advertisement as to essentially throw $50 out the window by never playing something they've already bought again.

They're just ads, not Satan incarnate. They will neither poison your mind, nor suck out your soul. Be a man and deal with it.

Well.... it is unreasonable to expect that.

Have you read any of the legislation being put out recently? Although the pages are short, they take about an hour to fully comprehend each.

Although it sounds horrible, keeping up with legislation being put forth is more than a full time job. Although there should be some level of responsibility for congressmen, sometimes it's understandable if they leave the reading like this up to the people putting the legislation forth, or to their aides/staff, even if it is getting information secondhand.

Proof that you get what you pay for.