2D Boy already did a comparison between two of their games, one released with DRM and one without.
They concluded that "there seems to be no difference in the outcomes" in the level of piracy, which for both games sat near an estimated 90% at first blush. They do revisit the numbers and end up with 82% for the non-DRM'd game, but it's likely that the same method was used for both games, and that the changes in methodology would have the same impact to the DRM numbers.
There's also Reflexive who tracked sales growth when compared to changes in DRM, who conclude that "for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale". While this reduces the value of DRM to many publishers (those people aren't going to buy the game in the first place), it is also provides a business case for DRM to those companies that offer downloads of their games (and where bandwidth is a notable cost).
by mug shot comparison from a central server, and that also scans and uploads the contents of operated the vehicle so that teams of specialized car inspectors can identify illegal items.
Such a rambling article. Is it a dongle that attaches to compromised machines in a corporate environment, or is it a set of tools on a bootable device that scan all hardware of already confiscated machines? Is it intercepting traffic, or examining what's already in place?
Ah, whatever. When it comes down to it, all they've got to do is hook up with Google and have this as extended functionality of Google Desktop.
Porn or not, Wikipedia's dependency on relative IP uniqueness has provided unexpected insight into the implementation.
I'd expect they're using DNS assisted URL filtering, as in, a "suspicious domains" list is provided to the ISP, and requests for resources on those domains are redirected to the "transparent proxies". In normal operation, the client connects to the ISPs DNS to get the IP of the destination machine. Then the client connects to that IP address.
If the domain is in the "suspicious" list, the request is redirected over to the proxy which masquerades as the actual web site (which is why SSL may work, but regular HTTP doesn't), provided the specific URL isn't the problem URL.
If the URL is in fact the problem URL, then the call to the actual web server doesn't happen - and the client gets the generated warning message.
This means that the ISP needn't maintain a list of all the URLs that are "bad", just a list of domains that may have "bad" content. It also means that the whole domain needn't be blocked if "bad" content has been found on it. However, it does mean that the web server sees only a small set of IPs.
This wouldn't affect someone like Google so much, but, because of their dependency on IPs, is much more noticeable for Wikipedia.
I provided similar text (plus pictures!) over there.
'cause we've sure left a bit of a mess around.
But at the same time we've put the mess places we can't see it, and made our own order where we can. Kinda reminds me of skeletons. In closets.
When dealing with corporate vendors, having clear requirements understood by the selection committee is both a time saver for the vendors, and also an inoculation against some sales techniques.
Here's an off the top of my head list of core details to have figured out before meeting the reps:
Are you planning on providing the students and faculty with the same email system? Why / Why not? This goes into the whole integration with calendars, accounts and so on.
Is the email address the student received only for use while they are enrolled, or will they retain it as alumni? This will help understand need for exporting of email, inter-system compatibility, so on.
Will the email system be part of any authentication system? This feeds into questions about interoperability, account creation (and mass account creation).
Will sensitive information be sent to students via this mail system? Medical conditions may be disclosed if your school operates some form of medical insurance. I'm not sure how grades, loan status, and other academic/financial details rate on the sensitivity scale, but sending this type of info through the school email system will drive questions about location of email hosting (out of state? offshore?).
If the encryption is computationally cheaper, then the decryption is computationally cheaper. I'd rather people know that what they're sending over the 'net can be sniffed than have them think that because example.com uses Rot13 encryption their traffic is private.
A few key points:
Obfuscation != Encryption
Cost to Encode (encrypt/compress/obfuscate) does not directly relate to the cost to decode. The relationship differs per algorithm used.
Cost to de-obfuscate without proper keys can be significantly more than cost to de-obfuscate with proper keys.
Well, either alangley is taking advantage of the Google Hosting and sortof the brand, or he's actually a Google Employee doing this type of stuff on his free time.
The process for leaving Facebook was to delete all your friend connections, remove all your posted pics, remove all your likes/dislikes, and correspond with Customer Support. This was painful. There has since been improvement - it's now a relatively one-click affair.
I left Facebook because their corporate philosophy seems to be that the user allows more exposure of posted information if they do not opt-out. Moving from a school only to school and corporate email acceptance, then to pretty much anyone, then to making "non personal" information available to search engines, each step of greater exposure occurred automatically unless you took action to prevent it.
Do I miss it? Sometimes. But then I go out and hang out with my friends in this city in person, and don't spend hours trying to track down that last person from my class in '98 who's possibly living in Guatemala.
And yeah, I probably end up on Facebook. And yeah, I miss out on some post-even pics. And yeah, I know that, given a bit of time and knowledge of tools, I can be tracked down based on my commonly used handle. But nonetheless, I have taken a stand.
The stand isn't for my own privacy. It's for everyone who gives away their information for convenience, and who doesn't read the changed TOUs, and who doesn't realize what they're exposing until they're denied employment based on pics they were tagged in a couple years before, on an account that, when they stopped using it, was only accessible to the other people in their school.
Slashdot Mirror
2D Boy already did a comparison between two of their games, one released with DRM and one without.
They concluded that "there seems to be no difference in the outcomes" in the level of piracy, which for both games sat near an estimated 90% at first blush. They do revisit the numbers and end up with 82% for the non-DRM'd game, but it's likely that the same method was used for both games, and that the changes in methodology would have the same impact to the DRM numbers.
There's also Reflexive who tracked sales growth when compared to changes in DRM, who conclude that "for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale". While this reduces the value of DRM to many publishers (those people aren't going to buy the game in the first place), it is also provides a business case for DRM to those companies that offer downloads of their games (and where bandwidth is a notable cost).
by mug shot comparison from a central server, and that also scans and uploads the contents of operated the vehicle so that teams of specialized car inspectors can identify illegal items.
Such a rambling article. Is it a dongle that attaches to compromised machines in a corporate environment, or is it a set of tools on a bootable device that scan all hardware of already confiscated machines? Is it intercepting traffic, or examining what's already in place?
Ah, whatever. When it comes down to it, all they've got to do is hook up with Google and have this as extended functionality of Google Desktop.
Porn or not, Wikipedia's dependency on relative IP uniqueness has provided unexpected insight into the implementation.
I'd expect they're using DNS assisted URL filtering, as in, a "suspicious domains" list is provided to the ISP, and requests for resources on those domains are redirected to the "transparent proxies". In normal operation, the client connects to the ISPs DNS to get the IP of the destination machine. Then the client connects to that IP address.
If the domain is in the "suspicious" list, the request is redirected over to the proxy which masquerades as the actual web site (which is why SSL may work, but regular HTTP doesn't), provided the specific URL isn't the problem URL.
If the URL is in fact the problem URL, then the call to the actual web server doesn't happen - and the client gets the generated warning message.
This means that the ISP needn't maintain a list of all the URLs that are "bad", just a list of domains that may have "bad" content. It also means that the whole domain needn't be blocked if "bad" content has been found on it. However, it does mean that the web server sees only a small set of IPs.
This wouldn't affect someone like Google so much, but, because of their dependency on IPs, is much more noticeable for Wikipedia. I provided similar text (plus pictures!) over there.
"Completely" is the key phrase. Damage to electronics due to water is actually due to unexpected circuits forming and burning out components.
So if it looks dry, wait another couple of days.
I, for one, welcome our new Arachnid overlords...
'cause we've sure left a bit of a mess around. But at the same time we've put the mess places we can't see it, and made our own order where we can. Kinda reminds me of skeletons. In closets.
When dealing with corporate vendors, having clear requirements understood by the selection committee is both a time saver for the vendors, and also an inoculation against some sales techniques.
Here's an off the top of my head list of core details to have figured out before meeting the reps:
Well, hope that helps.
If you started this, or you trust this process, please click OK.
I'm getting a 500 status connecting to the original, but it seems that Coral CDN has a decent cache.
For that WoW Glider guy.
If the encryption is computationally cheaper, then the decryption is computationally cheaper. I'd rather people know that what they're sending over the 'net can be sniffed than have them think that because example.com uses Rot13 encryption their traffic is private.
A few key points:
Well, either alangley is taking advantage of the Google Hosting and sortof the brand, or he's actually a Google Employee doing this type of stuff on his free time.
Hah, you don't even need to own land. Use the same alias for long enough on the net, and you can be tracked down quick and easy.
The process for leaving Facebook was to delete all your friend connections, remove all your posted pics, remove all your likes/dislikes, and correspond with Customer Support. This was painful. There has since been improvement - it's now a relatively one-click affair.
I left Facebook because their corporate philosophy seems to be that the user allows more exposure of posted information if they do not opt-out. Moving from a school only to school and corporate email acceptance, then to pretty much anyone, then to making "non personal" information available to search engines, each step of greater exposure occurred automatically unless you took action to prevent it.
Do I miss it? Sometimes. But then I go out and hang out with my friends in this city in person, and don't spend hours trying to track down that last person from my class in '98 who's possibly living in Guatemala.
And yeah, I probably end up on Facebook. And yeah, I miss out on some post-even pics. And yeah, I know that, given a bit of time and knowledge of tools, I can be tracked down based on my commonly used handle. But nonetheless, I have taken a stand.
The stand isn't for my own privacy. It's for everyone who gives away their information for convenience, and who doesn't read the changed TOUs, and who doesn't realize what they're exposing until they're denied employment based on pics they were tagged in a couple years before, on an account that, when they stopped using it, was only accessible to the other people in their school.