He didn't steal anything. Madoff stole actual money (imagine enough stacks of hundred to fill a library of congress)...This guy copied a string of ones and zeros ('product') that the RIAA didn't even create; hell they don't even represent the creator.

This is not a case about theft.

This is about placing a string of ones and zeros from a place that holds strings of ones and zeros to another place that holds ones and zeros.

This has been inevitable since September 16th, 1948 (or if you want to be pedantic: August 1962).

Identify each major portion of functionality. If you are working with a sales/billing system you would probably end up with : Orders, Invoices, Payments, Admin.

Go through each of those portions and identify the major portions. Orders: Order headers, Order details, business logic, ui logic, reports, datalayer, etc. Repeat until reduced into easily consumable units.

Pick and stick to an SDLC. Use whatever fits the situation and the resources. For a small project (under 100k lines of code) you should be good by yourself. Anything more and you'll have to involve at least 1 other person for testing. For medium (100k-500k lines) you'll need an additional dev...For large projects (500K-5M lines) you'll need a project manager, lead dev, 2 devs, 1 test, and a UAT team...For larger projects you'll have something unique and frightening to the specifics of the software project and corporation/agency making it...anyway, I digress...

Go through each subdivision line-by-line and re-write it yourself (even if you aren't going to put your re-written version into production); the only way you're going to truly understand what is going on is if you do it yourself. Use whatever language you are most comfortable with or is most appropriate to the task (or languages), it does not need to be the same as the original.

Verify that for a given input, your version produces an exact output.

Take a deep breath. It's not a race. It's a one-to-one functional mapping of your software (your mindspace) and the original software (the other developer(s) mindspace(s)). The code probably will not be straight forward. It has also been battle-scarred and will be warty. Changes of initial requirements through time and feature enhancements (feature creep) will have taken it's toll on what may have originally been something simple or even elegant. It's something of a niche mindset and if it is not for you, there exist many other exciting things to be programming.

Ultimately, if you do as outlined above, you'll solve many problems, be able to make whatever changes you like, and in so doing have a way to present your design as a replacement if you want...Or not, if you don't; for 30-40k lines parallel development makes sense, in a way, for one person.

Negative. It was specifically named "The Windows Activation Technology" for a reason.

It seems the citizenry, officers, and/or agents of the U.S. gov't have forgotten a few, really pertinent, things...

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 241 : Conspiracy against rights; If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;...

e.g. A police officer and his partner (and/or dispatch)

My Favoritest:

TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnaping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

It seems the citizenry, officers, and/or agents of the U.S. gov't have forgotten a few, really pertinent, things...

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 241 : Conspiracy against rights; If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;...

e.g. A police officer and his partner (and/or dispatch)

My Favorite:

TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnaping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

According to this, then, the heart, brain, and liver are liquids?

Furthermore, don't people contain more than 3Oz of expl...Fluids?

Your posting history brands you as an idiot, or a shill.

Seriously...Fuck-the-fuck-right-on-out-of-here.

Oh, and, Nixon is dead and I pissed on him (Well, since you're stupid, I'll extrapolate: I pissed on his grave, and inside-it, him), my piquant little-douche-hat.

No, I confuse nothing.

The quadrapaligic has no more right to kick you than my infant daughter: The point, in point of illustration, was that they can-not; I will assume you have the use of your arms, which gives you the right to punch. Your right to punch ends at my nose, not before...Capability is right and if you think otherwise, we'll go back to the prison you've dreamt up for all of us...

Again, you miss the point.

Laws are not restrictions. Laws are the 'here-ye, here-ye, we don't want this' of society. There is nothing in them at all that says "YOU MAY NOT DO SO" only "IF YOU DO X, THEN Y WILL HAPPEN". (X -> Y where X is in the domain of 'bad' things and Y in the domain of 'Law')

I will re-iterate. I will do so explicitly.

You have not the slightest clue what freedom is, or means. You seem to think that, somehow, safety is a given, and that resources are aplenty. You seem to think that because the word 'free' is in freedom, that it is cheap (this makes me hate you).

You are a silly boy who has not spent much time here; you must needs think more.

THINK. FOR FUCKS SAKE...THINK...

The route your train of thought takes us lets us off at the station where you are nothing more than property of the state and your thoughts are monitored with the same degree of analysis that Fermat's final proof was given.

I did not miss the point. You simply haven't been in a battlefield. You are too young too and too stupid and too comfortable for your own good.

I can only imagine what you think the natural condition of mankind is...I know for a fact that you are unable to understand why the absurdly lethal, mimetically programmed, omnivorous, social predator species you share a common bond with, keeps you around though. ...you're the asshole that would have otherwise, and is useful for in the future, being eaten by other (cousin) stupendous death machines...

Just before you descended into pompous arrogance, you hit the nail on the head.

With the exception of a small percentage of quadrapaligics everyone has the 'right' to kill just about anyone else; the effective denial of that capability amounts to something on the order of a prison state, without contact with others...

The fundamental tenet of Law is: While you are perfectly 'free' to do whatever the hell you want, there exist rules about certain things and actions, as well as consequences for breaking those rules. The severity of the consequences is supposed to be merited upon the severity of the offense, however, it is not predicated upon the notion that the law should be telling you what is the absolute action and reaction towards every possibility.

It is you, the ill-thinking, short-sighted, poorly informed, morally compromised, self-proclaimed-know-it-all, and your ilk who shaft those of us who give a hoot about freedom and what was given up for it. Since you've obviously thought all the way through about what type of tight-fettered control would be required to keep anyone from killing anyone else, perhaps you would be so kind as to share your notion of how a Nerfed prison society would last very long...or would it be 'if we just had more control'...

Off the top of my head I can think of only one: A middling-small-to-medium town in Ohio named Elyria, named after the Ely family. Asiding that, I think they're all rip-offs.

The problem also occurs with surgeons, the 'manual-laborers' of the medical world.

The problem with your analogy is that, often enough, the coder is the architect, the engineer, and the manual laborer, all-in-one.

Looking over the findings presented I have a difficult time agreeing with their model. It would appear they assume a static structure. A static model of a helicopter, or snowboarding session, or rifled-bullet would not work. It's the counterintuitive stability-through-dynamic adjustment thing that I suppose still hasn't caught on yet.

If one were to look it over it appears as though that if they were to assume a non-periodic, elongated-toroid-bubble, with the hawking radiation in the middle bit and the instability happening on the outer-and-inner shells, they'd have nary a problem: the weather inside stays peachy.

I would destroy, utterly, without shred of remorse, anyone who participated in this facade of 'caring'.