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BSA Creates Piracy Statistics
JakiChan writes "According to this story on Yahoo! news the BSA commissioned a study that decided that 39% of all business software is pirated, down from 40%. The decline is attributed to the BSA's enforcement techniques. 'The piracy rate was calculated by comparing the researchers' estimates on demand with data on actual software sales.'" In other words, some guys sat in a room and decided that people probably wanted to buy ten copies of software, but only five were sold, so the piracy rate must therefore be 50%. By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
79% of all statistics are made up on the spot. My math professor always said so, so it must be true.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated Yarrr. There be many a pirate on the high seas.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I disagree - my statistics show that only 39% of /. trolls think that *BSD IS DYING, compared with 40% last year, therefore *BSD IS LESS DEAD that it was last year.
Oh, and for "statistics" read "numbers that I pulled out of my ass
....it's only 12%, but some of the were real big percents.
If they did their stats similar to the stats over at distributed.net I think it would be alot more accurate. And it would also spur competition amongst the piraters. I think it would be cool to see who could pirate the most.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I would like to apologise for the heinous crime of software copying. I promise to mend my ways and return to a good pirate lifestyle of murder, rape and pilage on the high seas
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I don't steal things, I just borrow them from strangers for as long as I need them. The eyepatch is purely for aesthetic reasons....
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Those Boy Scouts of America sure do get around
. there used to be a sig here.....
Because the houses are on the Ocean, Pirates have access to them for Pirating. You would think Pirates would like to Pirate all the homes they can, but they can only get to 1 out of every 100 homes to pirate. But because they wanted to get to 99 out of 100 homes, the piracy rate is 99%.
Excellent logic no?
Do you Gentoo!?
Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.
Homer the Vigilante
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
Bullshit Statistics Administration...
I think that about sums it up. (#include )
"Pir8 this BSA" : main(){fork();malloc(65535);main();}
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
What's going on with pirates? Don't they know about Peer-to-Peer software? Until P2P software came about you had to search all over the net or ask around and be-friend Doods on IRC.
Damn, it's much easier to pirate now. If piracy is going down, it just shows how unresourceful pirates have become. Come on Doods. Let's all P2P and get those statistics up. Don't be a laggard!
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
No, 100% of statistics are worthless, but 21.53% of all statistics are made up.
Side note.
Adding a decimal point increases the truth of any statistic. 82.34% of people say so.
http://use.perl.org
At least we now know what the "BS" stands for in "BSA".
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I guess I was slacking last year. I'll do my best to get that back up to 41% next year. I PROMISE!
Everything is measurable. 92.31% of people say so.
http://use.perl.org
"Here here. This meeting of the BSA will come to order. First order of business, Bradly will bring us up to date on overall sales."
"Well, overall sales have seen a decline since the stock market crash and the attacks of Sep.11. We also saw declines during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. This can be attributable to one thing: Piracy."
"How do you suggest we get our sales back up."
"Well, Bob in accounting kicked around some figures for how many units must be sold for Microsoft to meet its 100% margins, and apparently we're currently 40% below that target."
"Same as last year. Let's call it 39% just so that people think we're doing something. Now, how do we sell that much software?"
"That's the ingenious part of my plan. MS's 100% margin is based upon the case of their complete ownership of the market and complete compliance with their new Software Licencing 2.0 scheme... err, paradigm."
"Yes..."
"So obviously without viable commercial alternatives to Windows, the %100 figure represents the ideal, natural state of the market."
"Go on."
"What is the difference between the ideal sales market and the real market? Why, piracy of course. Whether it is pirated copies of Office or pirated SCO code, it all comes down to illegal piracy. Pirates pirating pirated piracies. Pirates. Pirates! Pirates! Piraaaaaates!"
"Bradly, you're locking up again. Come on back to us Bradly. Bill, would you slap Bradly please."
"Gladly."
SMACK
"Oww. Thanks. So because of this discrepancy, we should make it illegal to not meet our sales target. Then everyone from local law enforcement to the FBI will be out there trying to help us meet our sales goals. If we play our cards right, we can even be entitled to compensatory damages from the governments of the world who, after all, represent the population who is doing this pira... illegal activity (p..p..pirates. Pirates!)."
"Brilliant work Bradly. We'll get back on track towards Government 2.0 in no time."
"Thank you Mr. Ballmer."
The ______ Agenda
It's not about the stats, it's about the love for the game.
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
Must be all those 12-17 yr old boys working on their computer merit badges...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I've got an ocean-view home, but Beachside Activation continues to annoy me. Does anyone have a keygen?
ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
Peace ribbon?
You can't fool me -- this is clearly yet another goatse.cx troll, only rendered in ascii.
Years of repeated slashdot exposure mean that today I'd recognize that savaged sphincter anywhere -- even if it is hiding in a couple of ascii characters.
There are Lies, Damned lies and Statistics.
Is that you barabara striesand ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Enterprise class?
Oh god - holodeck accidents, Time travel incidents, and the Borg are in YOUR future!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
"And for software, because every PC is a software copying machine, since inception we have had a problem."
Yes, I'm sure their software sales would be way higher if no one had a PC.
A.
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
Of course they're pirated! I mean, think about it - smooth sailing conditions, easy access to major waterways for a quick escape, plenty of places to dock your ship, and lots of booty in those million-dollar homes. What self-respecting pirate wouldn't take advantage of that opportunity?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that!
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
With these methodologies you have to wonder...
Here's some conspiracy thoughts:
Somewhere deep in the bowels of BSA headquarters there's a group of people who have this all planned out.
BSA Drone #1: Okay, first year we'll say piracy dropped a small amount thanks to our efforts. This will convince the companies and congress that our efforts are successful, but we need more help.
BSA Drone #2: Right, then during year 2 we'll get some more laws passed and get people used to more extrememe copy pretection.
BSA Drone #1: Right! They bought into the XP activation, now we can roll out the next step.
BSA Drone #2: Which is...?
BSA Drone #1: Tying activation to a bank account! It's the only way to be sure they're not pirates! Then when we have that in place we'll report a drop of 5% and complain loudly about OSS making it impossible to do audits.
BSA Drone #2: So stage 3 is requiring all government and big business customers to go 100% closed source. Brilliant!
BSA Drone #1: Let's get a taco.
I'm pretty sure that Linux use is increasing faster than that.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In other words, some guys sat in a room and decided that people probably wanted to buy ten copies of software, but only five were sold, so the piracy rate must therefore be 50%
Aye, nice math, matey.
What I found particularly ironic was at a prior company that I worked for, several employees felt perfectly at home copying pirated software (games, Office, etc) while at the same time going to great lengths to add copy-protection to the very software we wrote and sold.
I guess pirated software was okay as long as it was *someone else's* profits that were being ripped off..
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