therefore you must be a thief, as the control group only has 5 fingers...
evidence in trials? no, thanks!

it's funny to notice that it's exactly like this that the Mafia started... providing state-like "services" from "alternate" sources... and then the people became "addicted" to them... and now it lives on... from within :-)

it's the Pentium @ 90MHz with the floating point error in the firmware... :-)

more like misappropriation than theft then...

except that sometime they arrest you instead of the one who broke-in... (like Obama's friend...)

How is a local enforcement officer involved in a case of trademark/licensing/brand/virtualspace?

Isn't this something that would have FBI jurisdiction, if anything - unless the "crime" requires the help of the Interpol/Europol...

Questions:
- How is this a theft? (I'm sure that Cisco didn't accuse Apple of "theft" for the iPhone name...)
- How is this relevant in the XXI century? Surely it would take another couple of centuries before judges and juries would know anything about digital technologies... (no offence, but while I can understand the crime of falsifying financial transactions, I don't see a "theft" here... more like a joyride instead...)

Have fun, the night is still joung!

peeking at your wisdom, what's your estimate for the number of microcomputers in the USA at the time (1979) ?
somehow I feel that Microsoft didn't have any branch or customer abroad on that year, and in any case I don't think that there were those many [mini|micro|main] computers back then... so how does Gizmodo explain so many BASIC sold?

<offtopic>
women would enjoy the use of a time machine to go back at each "loss" of that...
</offtopic>

Why is that I hear Ballmer chanting: statistics, statistics, statistics...

200,000 microcomputers in 1979 and all Microsoft customers? I highly doubt that... where did this Bill guy get the numbers from?

Microsoft was founded only 4 years earlier and even though Bill had a $1 million fund from his grandpa, I don't see how he could market his software to 200,000 customers within just 4 years... maybe he was using the Traf-O-Data algorithm to count them...

anyhow, those weren't the .com bubble years... c'mon Bill, a little sanity check before you spread FUD on your bread...

maybe your eyes bled because of the green/amber screen you were looking at...

I would simply change your last step
- and publish the package as free software
with
- and give back the restructured database to the copyright owner for them to publish just the data free from copyright

If that doesn't sound right to them, then suggest that you will put it on a web page only accessible to yourself, leak the web link to Google and after it's indexed say "sorry for the mistake"...

Most quality assurance processes also are "measurements" (with possibly a following remedy if non-conformant) but do you think that consulting companies would consider that their "measurements" should be available for free to amyone? (I do...)

what's Slashdot? I thought this was a blog...

If you are really concerned about keeping it "yours", then write it down and register the copyright for it in your country. I believe that sending it as a fax to someone is a proper and legal way of making it "published". If you really think that it's also valuable, file a patent application (this is not automatic like the copyright, but works on a first come, first served basis, so better be first than sorry). The "writing it down" (and optionally faxing it) makes sure that you are the author of that specific "version" of the idea, which could come in handy later, but it's also probably the first step required to be able to distribute it "as yours" to other people and have it peer-reviewed (in a sense) by your colleagues/friends/whatever. You could use this second "step" before applying for a patent to avoid extra costs for having to revise it should something be wrong and the initial application is rejected by the Patent Office - although the nice country of the USA allows patents on software and I'll bite my nails for the first flawless piece of software, so I wouldn't worry about flawed ideas that you might want to patent if they're worthy... In summary, share it (publish), fix it (peer-review), and use it (?)

not to forget that power steering and ABS, well, need electricity to work.
How is that cutting power in the car while you are speeding at over 70mph (to give an example on UK motorways) will actually decrease the chance of killing someone?
If instead we are talking about urban areas (inside cities), then someone has to explain me what difference it makes to be hit at 30mph (the speed limit) or 35mph (which in "their" opinion would be enough to cut the power). Either that person should not be crossing the street in that place or in that moment, or the car should not be moving because of a traffic light or a pedestrian crossing.
Either way, I dont see how it would actually improve anything...