You can run your own software on the iPad - you just have to pay $99/year for the privilege.

Apparently you've never actually used a USB Serial Adapter or you'd know what a pain in the ass it is to get one that works properly, even with simple things like the Console port on a Cisco ASA router. We gave up after trying about six different types from various suppliers and instead revived an ancient Dell notebook that had a physical RS-232C port on it. Lord help us if the Dell one day decided to go belly-up.

+1

Folding@Home and SETI@Home have been popular with people wanting to advance science, I'm sure that mining for charities (i.e.: BitCoin@Home) would take off with the OxFam-style crowds. I'm dead against companies building mining into software that's supposed to be doing something else - that takes the decision away from users and is nothing better than a botnet for scammers/spammers.

Stop hosting it on Lotus Domino servers and you won't have to worry about how many people download the damned data.

This, plus if you're intending to limit the number of concurrent installs for your product *also* allow for a given install to be DE-registered:

1. provide a de-register menu/setting using the same "call home" service - people periodically upgrade or replace their machines, or
2. using a web interface on your site to delete a registration - sometimes machines crash and can't be restored from backups.

Yes, they have a responsibility but that doesn't make them responsible.

This is exactly why I don't buy anything any more from sites that don't support escrow services. This happened about ten years ago, but... a couple of weeks after using my visa card to buy a book on Xbox hacking my card details were used to buy about US$500 worth of stuff from the Harvard University book store. It took me about 9 weeks to get my money back from the bank, I had to cancel my card, etc.. Being my only credit card at the time it was a huge inconvenience and I was still liable for interest on the funds despite it being a fraudulent purchase (wtf?). Nowadays if a site requires a credit card to purchase something I'll shop elsewhere. And forget about putting correct birth dates and tax file numbers online.

First Apple doesn't own the VNC technology, so they can't legally enforce that.

Second, although OSX's "remote desktop" software listens on VNC's tcp/5900 for incoming connections, for remote OSX clients it uses Apple's custom Type 35 Diffie-Hellman authentication/private key exchange and then switches to an AES128-encrypted link to run Apple's own RDP protocol. i.e.: it's not even VNC protocol.

It's a USB-[thumbdrive-]sized device. If you looked at the picture it's got a HDMI connector on it.