Not necessarily... Many stores today allow you to exchange a gift you received (bought on their store, of course) for something else. Amazon is just removing the unnecessary steps of sending it to you and having you sending it back. As a consumer I think it's a great idea and since it's my decision to do this let Aunt Milly come ask me why I exchanged her gift.

Actually the developer has more choices than that... You can allow a user to use your app and delay check until an Internet connection is available (and many apps already require an Internet connection to be useful). Yes, that would mean taking a chance that some people might get to use your app for a while without paying, but it's still a reasonable compromise. This is absolutely not a piracy-proof idea (is there really any piracy-proof software?) and, as you said, there are better ways to do it. This is just so it becomes a bit harder to pirate apps. As a developer, I think investment in DRM or any other anti-piracy measures should only be enough so that the average user can't get around it easily. I also believe that, when in doubt, the app should act as if the user is a paying customer. There is really no point in implementing a very elaborate licensing/DRM system because it will only bother genuine paying customers. Those who are very tech-savvy and motivated enough to save a few bucks on an app will always find a way around it, and share it with others. Today I doubt that there is actually any popular and non-free software in any platform that also doesn't have a pirated no-drm/no-restrictions/cracked version going around in a torrent.

I used to work for a very large e-commerce company that made millions every day off the code I wrote in exchange for a monthly salary. If the code I wrote had made no money for the company I would still get my monthly salary. There was essentially very little risk involved for me. Today I have my own e-commerce company. I don't make millions yet but I still have to pay my programmers their monthly salary. If and when I start making millions that's what they're still gonna get because that's what we agreed to and that's my reward for taking the risk. Of course, once I have a lot I can give them bonuses for their performance if I want to, but that's my choice. If I go under tomorrow I'll be stuck with a ton of debts while the programmers can just get another job (and none of them will be giving me money to help pay for those debts). As for the bosses getting more money than the programmers, that's also the way it works. They have more responsibility, so they have to make more money. If something goes wrong in their department it's also usually their head, not the programmer's. People can always stop being programmers and pursue a management career. It all just depends on the choices you make for yourself.

...though it wouldn't necessarily make the apps any safer: http://www.todaysiphone.com/2010/07/disguised-tethering-app-tricks-apple/

Aw, come on! Phones that make calls are so 2009...

But when I download an app which has functionality related to accessing the content of my e-mails, making phone calls or sending text messages without my intervention, it's usually a good idea to allow them to do so. Besides, you always know what the app can and cannot do before you install it. You don't even have that kind of privilege on your computer. You install new software and you just trust that the developers did everything right, even though, in practice, the software can do just about anything on your computer.

It certainly costs more than owning your own hardware, but you're paying for convenience. If you have your own hardware, the actual cost is not only of the hardware itself. You can go ahead and double that cost to have redundancy (while in EC2 you don't give a crap when a server fails. Just restart the instance... if that). When it does fail you have to send someone out to the server's location to maintain it. You also have to worry about hardware upgrades and internet link upgrades. And that's if you're in the US. I live in Brazil and my company is switching to a cloud-based provider. Since server hardware and internet links are considerably more expensive here than in the US we'll be saving a ton of money every month. Our estimate is that our monthy costs with server maintenance and internet bandwidth will go from today's $2000/month down to around $500/month. (not counting the reduction in down time we'll have). If we needed a huge infrastructure with hundreds or thousands of servers we'd probably be better off having our own stuff, but in our case (and in the case of many others too) it's worth it.

This is what really happened

> His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ Actually, when the IQ test was first created men scored higher and the test was considered biased towards men. This was then changed so that the bias would be removed so, men and women are fairly equal because the test was designed to be that way. However, men still have a greater variance than women, even in on average they're both the same.

Just install market-enabler and you can use any paid apps you want

Happy Groundhog's Day!

What about their pirate flag? That should do it, right?

So, your an IT guy?

Looks like Google also cares a about horse privacy. That's really great! I woudn't want anyone recognizing my horse if he's caught doing something embarassing out in the street.