how important is unique IP / nameserver to SE ranking?

[Linkster]

BadDog - the way to see the dupe filter is to add &filter=0 to your query - its basically the same thing as Google does when they say "click here to see the omitted results"

One precaution that needs to be said here though is that Google knows that some people use that filter quote to their advantage and have disabled it for a few keywords (lemme know if you need to know which they are)

Im gonna have to agree with DDave here as I have done my own testing over the last few years that Google has been around - if you are making sites that have at least (this is just a number that I came up with) 20% different content you will avoid the two site dupe penalty - which BTW in the real world of Google only applies to sites on the same "domain name" - not the same IP.
This could change in the future as Google has applied and been approved to be their own registrar, which gives them access to the entire whois db on an auto-query level, so I would expect that in the future they may expand that dupe filter -
but I can tell you based on hard evidence (at least the hardest I can portray using my measely thousand domains) that their is no filter based on IP - although there does seem to be a small dampening effect for cross-linking based on the same IP.
I have always disagreed with some of the so-called SEM/SEOs out there in their thinking as I look at sites based on somewhere around 120 factors - which always takes me to some other things that are causing penalties other than what people posting on WM World and other boards seem to think they got penalized for.

<rant on>
I also try to dispense advice (as DDave does) based on what Ive really seen as opposed to what "could happen" as there are a lot of fear-mongerers running around out here that seem to prey on WMs lack of background in the SE world - and I think Dave, Bill and I (if I remember correctly) not only do extremely well in the SEs (Google especially) and we dont ever charge a cent for the advice we give.
To me its a total rip-off for anyone to charge for SEO/SEM - whether they know their stuff or not - who's to know if they really do??? And more importantly - who in their right mind really thinks that these SEOs really have an insight into how an algo is put together or how it's calculated - I can guarantee that not a one of the SEO's out there charging $300 or whatever an hour has any more "knowledge" than the guys here that do it for free
<rant off>