We're always seeing people eating strange things, whether it be fish that may or may not be lethal, to tasties like cow brains and pig testicles, this will be no different. There will be some that will eat it. If nothing else, ship it to people that would much prefer turdburgers to starvation. But the start will probably just be people eating it for the shock/novelty value.
The scientist says his goal is to make it the same price as regular meat... I think they're going to have to go a little better than that, make it cheaper. If you can drop the cost per calorie/nutrient down to at least that of say, grain, it'd be an ideal foodsource for places that need food relief. Right now they don't see meat because of cost - grain is still their cheapest alternative. This would be a lot higher in protein, so if they could at least match the cost, that'd be a hit.
I'm amazed it took this long for this public of a bounty to get going. The blackhat market has traded in exploits for years now, and vendors have just now really started getting on the bug-bounty-bandwagon, it was only a matter of time before metasploit and other popular "other side of the fence" offers came up. I wonder what Zeus's authors are paying nowadays? And I wonder what exactly the results of competition in this sector will be? (good for us? bad for us? just a good show?)
That's saying "Microsoft needs more customer lock-in and more proprietary things to force on their users, not following open standards and inter-operability." what's wrong with you?
Of course, I suppose that might be good for Microsoft, but not the rest of the planet. Whose side are you on anyway?
I think the point is to attract customer to build a customer base, but on the other hand you only get people looking for a great deal. Oh well.
I was thinking about that and realized that's a risk for any sale, be it a coupon or basic no-coupon-required sale. You are going to get people coming in only because things are on sale, that have no intention of returning to your store until there's another sale. You're also going to offer sale prices to people that were there not even expecting a deal. (losing money on them)
That's just an inherent risk of running a sale. You throw money into advertising and money into the sale discount, in exchange for attracting new repeat customers. Every sale is going to attract these 'deadbeat coupon users'. It's just a question of what percentage you convert into return normal-price customers, and how much the sale initially costs you. You've got to run the numbers carefully to determine where the break-even point is going to be, (if it even exists) and how long you will have to wait for it.
Blindly relying on your advertiser to provide you with useful and accurate information here is completely stupid. Advertisers are not in the business of making you money, they're in the business of making them money. There are going to be some established more honest and upfront advertisers that will try to build a mutually beneficial business relationship and retain you as a customer, and there are also going to be sharks that are just going to sucker punch your business and take your cash and go hunt for another sucker. Such is the business world. You think B2C is bad? B2B is a good deal more cutthroat. Relying on a new business partner to protect your best interest is going to sting you later of not sooner.
And obviously national advertisers are going to be a lot less interested in building a long-term partnership with you than say, someone local. They don't have a pool of a thousand local businesses to work with, they have millions of businesses all over the country. Your business is a disposable opportunity to them. It's in Groupon's best interest to hit you as hard as possible for the biggest gain possible, and then look for another sucker. If they're playing their cards right, they'll accept a more reasonable and mutually-benefitial deal if they have to, but there's more money to be made up-front by suckering you, since they don't need your return business. And you can bet their sales reps' commissions are based around that concept. (3 pts for a slam dunk, or 1 pt for a return customer)
Summary: small business owner meets with new outside business partner, unprepared and without doing prior research, expecting them to offer mutually-benefiical terms, accepts their initial offer without careful consideration or ability to track results, and doesn't get what they expected. Does this surprise anyone?
They're probably hoping to buy off enough of the market that they can stop so heavily subsidizing it and start to actually turn it into a money maker rather than a money loser. That's one thing I don't like about MS is when they use their wealth from other areas and try to use it to buy a market. Not having a bottommless well of venture capital is part of what keeps markets alive and growing/improving, and when a company like MS basically cuts a blank check for their first product into a market, it majorly screws with the balance.
So I guess I like seeing them pour sand down a rathole. Serves them right. But sometimes it pays out for them. Less and less nowadays though, thankfully. But they've got so much capital right now and don't bat an eyelash to spend it, so it's not likely to stop anytime soon. I just hate to see them buy out a market that has a few good legit vendors, and then flush the entire thing down the toilet, it hurts us all. We're all waiting to see what sort of catastrophe they have engineered for Skype...
I'm more inclined to trust Verizon knows more about making money selling cell phones than MS does. (and Verizon has a vested interest in making money selling contracts, not Windows phones) It would be interesting to see what sort of margin comparison there is between the phones they sell.
But then, MS is very well known to use their fat wallet to bankroll/subsidize new products to try to make up for them being late to market. It used to work well. Not so much anymore. I'd be surprised if MS wasn't practically giving them away just to get their club-foot in the door. If they're not doing that, it would explain why Verizon isn't pushing them.
It must just irritate the hell out of microsoft to not be able to bully the cell phone carriers like they would have done in the past in any new market, to tell them when to jump and how high.
What youâ(TM)re seeing here is a solar flare (an enormous explosion of pent-up magnetic energy)
What I don't yet understand is how you can have "pent-up magnetic energy"? So many of the quacks trying to push their perpetual motion machines claim they are harnessing the "power of magnetism", at which point the experts swoop in and point out you can't extract energy from a magnet. So how's the sun doing it?
I suppose it's going to wind up something like a spring, where you wind it up by inputing energy, and then can extract that "pent-up" energy, but I'd like to hear more about the actual mechanism at work here.
One other thing I find annoying about the video, and most others like it showing prominences, is they are always so quick. Usually a flair lasts ten frames or so (~1/2 to 1 second) when played back. Why can't they record it slower so we can see more detail, or does it really happen that fast?
Wait... aren't we talking about the same iOS that gets jailbroken like clockwork still?
Physical access=owned. If you don't know that, turn over your card.
Jailbreaking requires physical access. (overwriting firmware after booting it into recovery mode)
So how is this possibly a "security problem"? The only time I can recall was that very brief window of time where you could browse to a web page to jailbreak your iphone.
Successful businesses rarely care about their roots, because that's not where the money is. (or where they think it is, anyway)
Unless there's obvious profit in it, a business has no reason to "return to its roots", or to do anything for the people whose heads they have climbed over to get where they are. One you're on top, there's no reason to care about those below you where you came from.
liftoff went well, tho it was a bit wobbly there early on but at least it didn't flip over or sink back down like some of those entertaining V2 and other rocket test movies on youtube.
The parachute failed to deploy properly, so hard to say what they will have for recovery, and hard to say if they have some flotation devices, but I assume so.
But well done all the same. A lot better than pretty much everyone else has done on their first rocket test.
Yet they'd never be more than one IR cut filter away from a lawsuit.
Don't most daylight digital cameras already have IR filters on them? That's why when you look closely at a digital camera lens, it has a dark reddish tint to it. I've tried using IR light to convert a webcam into a nighttime camera and it never goes well unless i feel like tearing the camera apart and removing the filter. (which on MOST cameras, is a severe pita)
But without that filter, the IR light overwhelms the sensor during the daytime, so it's required for daytime use. I just bought a camera that has daytime/nighttime mode, and it swings a red IR filter into place in front of the CCD for daytime operation.
Sooooo my question is, just how effective is this system going to be if there's an IR filter in place? Now I realize it doesn't completely cut out the IR - I can for example see the blinky light on my remote in my webcam, but it's brightness is greatly reduced.
I think this is actually a good idea. I'm not a supporter of censorship, but if you can set the whole censorship idea aside, think about it. They are essentially considering making an islamic internet. A darknet, relative to the common global internet. This isn't really such a bad idea for them. It would allow them to regulate the content on their internet, to create their own "walled garden" as the popular catchphrase of late describes. I could see other conservative islamic states like saudi arabia etc linking in to this and it flourishing.
Lets face it, right now they have a system of values that's not very compatible with the non-islamic world, and the internet is all about free exchange of information and ideas, which makes it something of a blessing and a curse at the same time. It connects them together in a way they want, but to the world in a way they [b]don't[/b] want. IslamNET would solve that problem for them. Remember, this isn't a case of the government trying to censor off what the majority of their citizens want. (like China) Here, MOST of them would prefer it this way. Us trying to stick our heads into this discussion really isn't appropriate. You may not agree with it, but that's the values system they've been raised in and that's how their society works, and we need to respect that, even if we don't agree with it or don't think it's what's best for them.
It wouldn't be too difficult to make gateways on the internet for passing specific traffic, business-related things etc. It'd be like a firewall with a default-deny policy. Really the whole concept isn't too different than a company's intranet. Complaining about IslamNET isn't too far off from complaining about your company's firewall not allowing you to get on IRC.
Distributing information is usually called "speech". As in "freedom of..."
There are a few sensible exceptions to this. Inciting riot for example, is an attempt to abuse freedom of speech. Same goes for slander.
"Freedom of speech" does not entitle you to say anything at any time.
As far as "distribution of information" goes specifically, you can't distribute information on production of a silencer for example. Basically what a lot of that boils down to is you should not be distributing instructions on how to do an activity that serves no purpose beyond depriving someone of their rights.
I take it places like that assume their laws apply globally?
Wonder what kind of an argument that would make in a real court there, bringing up a scenario where someone from Thailand had an affair while in Thailand and then flew to somewhere in the middle east where that was a capital offense, and got arrested at risk of execution?
But then it's a "secret trial" which usually translates to a "mock trial". I'd expect those trials have a 99.999% conviction rate. I wonder why they bother with them? it's not like it's helping their image...
The only way they could legitimately say they have any sort of jurisdiction is if he make his posts on a server IN Thailand. But I rather doubt that's what happened.
It's getting to be a meme on youtube, where they start with quiet, soft, soothing music, UNTIL ALL OF A SUDDEN THEY BUMP IT 60DB about 35 seconds in, sending me scrambling for my volume control. Don't turn your volume up like I did. God I hate that.
But the video still looks nice while listening to the sounds of my ears ring.
The whole concept of winner-takes-all segment voting, either by district in a state, or by electoral collage for the presidency, is a scam. Plan and simple.
Back in "the day", it made more sense because it was a great deal more difficult to collect votes from all over the country to one central place to count. It was simpler to just send a representative from each of the regions and have them cast their vote for the majority of the voters they represented. This system relied on the voter distribution being at least somewhat random relative to the boundary lines.
It's bad enough when we have to deal with "winner take all" madness by state every four years, (where some states are virtually ignored, and others like CALIFORNIA are flooded by campaigning) but at least the politicians can't move state borders around to their advantage. This moving of voting districts in states all the time serves one and only one purpose, to game the voting system. And for that reason alone it should be outlawed, on a federal level.
If they can't simply do a popular vote, then at least use a fixed boundary like county lines.
1) a hacker that manages to engineer a zero-day has a whole line of customers willing to pay serious money for it. Malware authors that just got their cash cow's exploit patched last week are foaming at the mouth waiting for a new zero-day to put them back on track. They're making lots of money on their malware and are definitely willing to pay to keep it running a few more months. Companies aren't usually willing to pay a lot for an exploit. (there are exceptions but they are still uncommon) I'd love to see some hard numbers on what an average malware author nets a month.
2) said hacker can sell it more than once. Possibly many times. Why sell your exploit to the vendor once when you can sell it 100 times to other people? Is the vendor really going to be willing to pay you 100x what one desperate malware author can pay? Hard numbers on what a zero day ends up paying off would be really interesting to look at, and is what the vendors need to be considering when setting their bounties.
3) vendors downplay vulnerabilities as a way of life. They have every reason to tell you that the hole you discovered is of little value and try to cheat you on the payoff. On the other hand, selling it to the malware community is a reputation based system. Sell crap and it will hurt your reputation and hurt your business. They know a good exploit when they see it and will pay you what it's worth. The hacker can either make themselves the Bitch or the Man. Being the Man will naturally be more profitable.
4) if the vendors start snatching up the exploits, it's just going to drive up the price of them on the black market. And any good salesman sells to the highest bidder. At some point, the black market price is going to exceed whatever the vendors are willing to pay. Desperate customers with deep pockets will still get their hands on the exploits. (though this would arguably reduce the number of them in the wild due to higher cost)
5) lets not forget that if you create a legitimate reason to hack your product, it will increase the number of exploits found. Some consider this a good thing, but a lot of vendors consider this a bad thing. And they're usually impossible to convince otherwise.
With piracy, there is no money (for this title) going back to the developers because duplicates are created for no money.
If you're going to use the "splitting up the cost" analogy, you have to extend it to piracy. A title that's sold new once and used twice, is split three ways. So a title that's bought once and pirated 100 times is split 101 ways. OK it's a lot lower return, but it's not zero. Almost always there's at least one original sale source to the pirated copy.
Look at SD cards, compared to say, usb flash drives or even floppies. I'm sure they were scoffed at for being inconveniently small at the time.
Now look at the Micro SD cards. They took something that some already thought was too small, and made it a LOT smaller. ok, THAT is getting into my area of "inconveniently small", but yet here we have them and they're popular in small devices like cell phones. A smaller sim card is just the same way, it's just the next step, not the last.
People only sell games that aren't good enough to play after playing through once. Thus the used game market only damages bad games, enabling the consumers to express their opinion after they bought the product.
I think that's over-generalizing. They're not very common, but games do come out from time to time that have very good replay value. One of my favorite examples was Deus Ex. Not only did it let you ally yourself with one of three factions, (and change loyalties on a whim) but it allowed for somewhere around a dozen irreversible character customizations that defined polar opposites in various aspects of gameplay. Even after you'd beat the game in all three of the major variations, you could still go through and try for different scenario plays. Do you prefer to run faster or run quieter? Carry more or jump higher? Greater strength or steadier aim? There were lots of choices that you had to make that would define how you had to play the game down the road, making the levels play very differently.
The summary doesn't account for the very real possibility that a much higher percentage of used game buyers would have bought the game than pirates, had neither had a choice.
In other words, if you look at 100 pirates and 10 used buyers, and stop the piracy and used market, maybe 5 used buyers would pony up, but only maybe 3 pirates. But I'm just pulling those numbers out of the air - you can't say either way without hard numbers, and they're' not being presented here.
But I think we've all figured out at this point that a high piracy rate doesn't have to translate into a lot of lost sales. Every time we hear the "industry" cry the pirates are costing them money, they're conveniently counting every pirated copy as a lost sale, which is so far into fantasy land that it crosses clearly into insulting our intelligence.
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We're always seeing people eating strange things, whether it be fish that may or may not be lethal, to tasties like cow brains and pig testicles, this will be no different. There will be some that will eat it. If nothing else, ship it to people that would much prefer turdburgers to starvation. But the start will probably just be people eating it for the shock/novelty value.
The scientist says his goal is to make it the same price as regular meat... I think they're going to have to go a little better than that, make it cheaper. If you can drop the cost per calorie/nutrient down to at least that of say, grain, it'd be an ideal foodsource for places that need food relief. Right now they don't see meat because of cost - grain is still their cheapest alternative. This would be a lot higher in protein, so if they could at least match the cost, that'd be a hit.
I'm amazed it took this long for this public of a bounty to get going. The blackhat market has traded in exploits for years now, and vendors have just now really started getting on the bug-bounty-bandwagon, it was only a matter of time before metasploit and other popular "other side of the fence" offers came up. I wonder what Zeus's authors are paying nowadays? And I wonder what exactly the results of competition in this sector will be? (good for us? bad for us? just a good show?)
Any (reputable) place to contribute to this legal fight?
*nods*
That's saying "Microsoft needs more customer lock-in and more proprietary things to force on their users, not following open standards and inter-operability." what's wrong with you?
Of course, I suppose that might be good for Microsoft, but not the rest of the planet. Whose side are you on anyway?
I was thinking about that and realized that's a risk for any sale, be it a coupon or basic no-coupon-required sale. You are going to get people coming in only because things are on sale, that have no intention of returning to your store until there's another sale. You're also going to offer sale prices to people that were there not even expecting a deal. (losing money on them)
That's just an inherent risk of running a sale. You throw money into advertising and money into the sale discount, in exchange for attracting new repeat customers. Every sale is going to attract these 'deadbeat coupon users'. It's just a question of what percentage you convert into return normal-price customers, and how much the sale initially costs you. You've got to run the numbers carefully to determine where the break-even point is going to be, (if it even exists) and how long you will have to wait for it.
Blindly relying on your advertiser to provide you with useful and accurate information here is completely stupid. Advertisers are not in the business of making you money, they're in the business of making them money. There are going to be some established more honest and upfront advertisers that will try to build a mutually beneficial business relationship and retain you as a customer, and there are also going to be sharks that are just going to sucker punch your business and take your cash and go hunt for another sucker. Such is the business world. You think B2C is bad? B2B is a good deal more cutthroat. Relying on a new business partner to protect your best interest is going to sting you later of not sooner.
And obviously national advertisers are going to be a lot less interested in building a long-term partnership with you than say, someone local. They don't have a pool of a thousand local businesses to work with, they have millions of businesses all over the country. Your business is a disposable opportunity to them. It's in Groupon's best interest to hit you as hard as possible for the biggest gain possible, and then look for another sucker. If they're playing their cards right, they'll accept a more reasonable and mutually-benefitial deal if they have to, but there's more money to be made up-front by suckering you, since they don't need your return business. And you can bet their sales reps' commissions are based around that concept. (3 pts for a slam dunk, or 1 pt for a return customer)
Summary: small business owner meets with new outside business partner, unprepared and without doing prior research, expecting them to offer mutually-benefiical terms, accepts their initial offer without careful consideration or ability to track results, and doesn't get what they expected. Does this surprise anyone?
They're probably hoping to buy off enough of the market that they can stop so heavily subsidizing it and start to actually turn it into a money maker rather than a money loser. That's one thing I don't like about MS is when they use their wealth from other areas and try to use it to buy a market. Not having a bottommless well of venture capital is part of what keeps markets alive and growing/improving, and when a company like MS basically cuts a blank check for their first product into a market, it majorly screws with the balance.
So I guess I like seeing them pour sand down a rathole. Serves them right. But sometimes it pays out for them. Less and less nowadays though, thankfully. But they've got so much capital right now and don't bat an eyelash to spend it, so it's not likely to stop anytime soon. I just hate to see them buy out a market that has a few good legit vendors, and then flush the entire thing down the toilet, it hurts us all. We're all waiting to see what sort of catastrophe they have engineered for Skype...
I'm more inclined to trust Verizon knows more about making money selling cell phones than MS does. (and Verizon has a vested interest in making money selling contracts, not Windows phones) It would be interesting to see what sort of margin comparison there is between the phones they sell.
But then, MS is very well known to use their fat wallet to bankroll/subsidize new products to try to make up for them being late to market. It used to work well. Not so much anymore. I'd be surprised if MS wasn't practically giving them away just to get their club-foot in the door. If they're not doing that, it would explain why Verizon isn't pushing them.
It must just irritate the hell out of microsoft to not be able to bully the cell phone carriers like they would have done in the past in any new market, to tell them when to jump and how high.
What I don't yet understand is how you can have "pent-up magnetic energy"? So many of the quacks trying to push their perpetual motion machines claim they are harnessing the "power of magnetism", at which point the experts swoop in and point out you can't extract energy from a magnet. So how's the sun doing it?
I suppose it's going to wind up something like a spring, where you wind it up by inputing energy, and then can extract that "pent-up" energy, but I'd like to hear more about the actual mechanism at work here.
One other thing I find annoying about the video, and most others like it showing prominences, is they are always so quick. Usually a flair lasts ten frames or so (~1/2 to 1 second) when played back. Why can't they record it slower so we can see more detail, or does it really happen that fast?
Physical access=owned. If you don't know that, turn over your card.
Jailbreaking requires physical access. (overwriting firmware after booting it into recovery mode)
So how is this possibly a "security problem"? The only time I can recall was that very brief window of time where you could browse to a web page to jailbreak your iphone.
Successful businesses rarely care about their roots, because that's not where the money is. (or where they think it is, anyway)
Unless there's obvious profit in it, a business has no reason to "return to its roots", or to do anything for the people whose heads they have climbed over to get where they are. One you're on top, there's no reason to care about those below you where you came from.
no wait, I don't. Get me some popcorn, this is a good show.
liftoff went well, tho it was a bit wobbly there early on but at least it didn't flip over or sink back down like some of those entertaining V2 and other rocket test movies on youtube.
The parachute failed to deploy properly, so hard to say what they will have for recovery, and hard to say if they have some flotation devices, but I assume so.
But well done all the same. A lot better than pretty much everyone else has done on their first rocket test.
Don't most daylight digital cameras already have IR filters on them? That's why when you look closely at a digital camera lens, it has a dark reddish tint to it. I've tried using IR light to convert a webcam into a nighttime camera and it never goes well unless i feel like tearing the camera apart and removing the filter. (which on MOST cameras, is a severe pita)
But without that filter, the IR light overwhelms the sensor during the daytime, so it's required for daytime use. I just bought a camera that has daytime/nighttime mode, and it swings a red IR filter into place in front of the CCD for daytime operation.
Sooooo my question is, just how effective is this system going to be if there's an IR filter in place? Now I realize it doesn't completely cut out the IR - I can for example see the blinky light on my remote in my webcam, but it's brightness is greatly reduced.
I think this is actually a good idea. I'm not a supporter of censorship, but if you can set the whole censorship idea aside, think about it. They are essentially considering making an islamic internet. A darknet, relative to the common global internet. This isn't really such a bad idea for them. It would allow them to regulate the content on their internet, to create their own "walled garden" as the popular catchphrase of late describes. I could see other conservative islamic states like saudi arabia etc linking in to this and it flourishing.
Lets face it, right now they have a system of values that's not very compatible with the non-islamic world, and the internet is all about free exchange of information and ideas, which makes it something of a blessing and a curse at the same time. It connects them together in a way they want, but to the world in a way they [b]don't[/b] want. IslamNET would solve that problem for them. Remember, this isn't a case of the government trying to censor off what the majority of their citizens want. (like China) Here, MOST of them would prefer it this way. Us trying to stick our heads into this discussion really isn't appropriate. You may not agree with it, but that's the values system they've been raised in and that's how their society works, and we need to respect that, even if we don't agree with it or don't think it's what's best for them.
It wouldn't be too difficult to make gateways on the internet for passing specific traffic, business-related things etc. It'd be like a firewall with a default-deny policy. Really the whole concept isn't too different than a company's intranet. Complaining about IslamNET isn't too far off from complaining about your company's firewall not allowing you to get on IRC.
There are a few sensible exceptions to this. Inciting riot for example, is an attempt to abuse freedom of speech. Same goes for slander.
"Freedom of speech" does not entitle you to say anything at any time.
As far as "distribution of information" goes specifically, you can't distribute information on production of a silencer for example. Basically what a lot of that boils down to is you should not be distributing instructions on how to do an activity that serves no purpose beyond depriving someone of their rights.
I take it places like that assume their laws apply globally?
Wonder what kind of an argument that would make in a real court there, bringing up a scenario where someone from Thailand had an affair while in Thailand and then flew to somewhere in the middle east where that was a capital offense, and got arrested at risk of execution?
But then it's a "secret trial" which usually translates to a "mock trial". I'd expect those trials have a 99.999% conviction rate. I wonder why they bother with them? it's not like it's helping their image...
The only way they could legitimately say they have any sort of jurisdiction is if he make his posts on a server IN Thailand. But I rather doubt that's what happened.
It's getting to be a meme on youtube, where they start with quiet, soft, soothing music, UNTIL ALL OF A SUDDEN THEY BUMP IT 60DB about 35 seconds in, sending me scrambling for my volume control. Don't turn your volume up like I did. God I hate that.
But the video still looks nice while listening to the sounds of my ears ring.
The whole concept of winner-takes-all segment voting, either by district in a state, or by electoral collage for the presidency, is a scam. Plan and simple.
Back in "the day", it made more sense because it was a great deal more difficult to collect votes from all over the country to one central place to count. It was simpler to just send a representative from each of the regions and have them cast their vote for the majority of the voters they represented. This system relied on the voter distribution being at least somewhat random relative to the boundary lines.
It's bad enough when we have to deal with "winner take all" madness by state every four years, (where some states are virtually ignored, and others like CALIFORNIA are flooded by campaigning) but at least the politicians can't move state borders around to their advantage. This moving of voting districts in states all the time serves one and only one purpose, to game the voting system. And for that reason alone it should be outlawed, on a federal level.
If they can't simply do a popular vote, then at least use a fixed boundary like county lines.
grouse all you like, but that's the only one that's working for me ATM. ty original poster.
Cash For Exploits has several problems:
1) a hacker that manages to engineer a zero-day has a whole line of customers willing to pay serious money for it. Malware authors that just got their cash cow's exploit patched last week are foaming at the mouth waiting for a new zero-day to put them back on track. They're making lots of money on their malware and are definitely willing to pay to keep it running a few more months. Companies aren't usually willing to pay a lot for an exploit. (there are exceptions but they are still uncommon) I'd love to see some hard numbers on what an average malware author nets a month.
2) said hacker can sell it more than once. Possibly many times. Why sell your exploit to the vendor once when you can sell it 100 times to other people? Is the vendor really going to be willing to pay you 100x what one desperate malware author can pay? Hard numbers on what a zero day ends up paying off would be really interesting to look at, and is what the vendors need to be considering when setting their bounties.
3) vendors downplay vulnerabilities as a way of life. They have every reason to tell you that the hole you discovered is of little value and try to cheat you on the payoff. On the other hand, selling it to the malware community is a reputation based system. Sell crap and it will hurt your reputation and hurt your business. They know a good exploit when they see it and will pay you what it's worth. The hacker can either make themselves the Bitch or the Man. Being the Man will naturally be more profitable.
4) if the vendors start snatching up the exploits, it's just going to drive up the price of them on the black market. And any good salesman sells to the highest bidder. At some point, the black market price is going to exceed whatever the vendors are willing to pay. Desperate customers with deep pockets will still get their hands on the exploits. (though this would arguably reduce the number of them in the wild due to higher cost)
5) lets not forget that if you create a legitimate reason to hack your product, it will increase the number of exploits found. Some consider this a good thing, but a lot of vendors consider this a bad thing. And they're usually impossible to convince otherwise.
Look at SD cards, compared to say, usb flash drives or even floppies. I'm sure they were scoffed at for being inconveniently small at the time.
Now look at the Micro SD cards. They took something that some already thought was too small, and made it a LOT smaller. ok, THAT is getting into my area of "inconveniently small", but yet here we have them and they're popular in small devices like cell phones. A smaller sim card is just the same way, it's just the next step, not the last.
I think that's over-generalizing. They're not very common, but games do come out from time to time that have very good replay value. One of my favorite examples was Deus Ex. Not only did it let you ally yourself with one of three factions, (and change loyalties on a whim) but it allowed for somewhere around a dozen irreversible character customizations that defined polar opposites in various aspects of gameplay. Even after you'd beat the game in all three of the major variations, you could still go through and try for different scenario plays. Do you prefer to run faster or run quieter? Carry more or jump higher? Greater strength or steadier aim? There were lots of choices that you had to make that would define how you had to play the game down the road, making the levels play very differently.
The summary doesn't account for the very real possibility that a much higher percentage of used game buyers would have bought the game than pirates, had neither had a choice.
In other words, if you look at 100 pirates and 10 used buyers, and stop the piracy and used market, maybe 5 used buyers would pony up, but only maybe 3 pirates. But I'm just pulling those numbers out of the air - you can't say either way without hard numbers, and they're' not being presented here.
But I think we've all figured out at this point that a high piracy rate doesn't have to translate into a lot of lost sales. Every time we hear the "industry" cry the pirates are costing them money, they're conveniently counting every pirated copy as a lost sale, which is so far into fantasy land that it crosses clearly into insulting our intelligence.