That wouldn't be progress. How many people would bother to figure out how to take the time to do that? No, it has to be so simple to do that it can be done trivially by almost anybody but still require physical access to the machine.

Well, I certainly don't think its value will 'only increase'. I think that the ideal scenario has a more or less smooth S curve in which the value increases to a certain level then plateaus. After that, I would expect the value to fluctuate up and down a bit, and on average increase slowly.

Anyway, we'll likely see how it all pans out. There are enough businesses now that accept it that it's not going away in a heartbeat. And a secure way to pay for things with your smartphone with a similar level of anonymity as cash would be very nice to have.

That is an interesting take. And you might be right. I'm not sure. I know that I intend to spend bitcoins. I will do that because if I don't they won't end up having any value at all. But that requires a certain amount of long-term thinking that hasn't generally characterized our modern financial institutions.

Did I claim the laser pointer guy should've been charged with 60 counts of negligent homicide? I don't think so.

And the law rightly distinguishes between actions you take and things you don't take proper care with (aka negligence). Actions you purposely take that are illegal are generally punished more harshly than negligence.

You can, in fact, be charged for negligently allowing your attention to wander while driving for precisely the reason you outline.

*nod* I can understand that point of view, and I do not wholly disagree. Jail is pretty inhumane. I'm not sure I agree yet either, but it's certainly worth thinking about.

This is an absolutely awful situation. Essentially a government run organization is now responsible for decided which things people want to do are worthy of extending credit for. You've suddenly killed any kind of creative or disruptive debt-based investment right there.

1. 1. Crypto - It has been casually audited by several people. I know several people who've been closely associated with the cypherpunks crown who have looked the protocol over and found it fairly secure. Dan Kaminsky is one of these people. I have also personally audited it. Though I think my opinion is worth far less than the other people I've mentioned. The problem here, of course, is who do you trust to do the audit? Why?
2. 2. Security - This is a good point. They are Open Source projects, so they are available to anyone's inspection. Some flaws have been found in the code, though none that are network breakingly serious (the block size flaw introduced in 0.8.0 is the most notorious here, but that was fairly trivial for the network to handle once it was found). More effort could go on in this area. Again though, who do you trust to do the audit? And why?
3. 3. Obscurity - Who cares who created it? Why does it matter at all? Everything is up for public inspection. There are no hidden secrets here. For all you know, it was created by a respected cryptographer. I can well understand why someone who created a system like Bitcoin would want to remain anonymous. Phil Zimmer was certainly treated extremely poorly for having created PGP.
4. 4. Economics - The deflation (Do not mix that up with inflation. The two effects are opposites and have a very different effect on the economy.) problem is interesting. I have not seen any convincing arguments for whether it's a blessing or a disaster. Everybody is expecting it though, and I suspect that will make it better. And while I think it will significantly hamper the availability of credit, I don't necessarily think it will stamp out investment. But those are questions that are pretty hard to answer a priori. One interesting thing is that if enough people think that deflation is really bad, the protocol can easily be altered to allow for currency creation again. But all the participants have to agree.

I invested a bunch of money in mining hardware. I will be using it. I hope for a return on my investment, but am not depending on it. I'm doing it because I want to help Bitcoin succeed as a mainstream currency. The amount of money I'm investing is not large, even after you factor in the electricity costs.

There are a lot of reasons for punishment. Deterrence is a valid reason. The possible harmful consequences of this action are extreme. This kind of reckless behavior could easily result in multiple deaths. I think a little bit of extreme deterrence is warranted.

Aaron Schwartz's behavior might've hurt someone's profits someday, and really didn't hurt anybody. It took up the time of a few admins who decided to try to stop him and that's about it. There is no societal need for a high level of deterrence there.

The reason I because I want audio I can recompress to the format I like without progressive degradation. Better lossy formats might be created in the future, and I want to be able to re-encode in those formats without suffering the losses due to lossy compression twice.

Ahh, re-read the OP and realized my answer wasn't fully relevant. For software like that...

Release it as Open Source. Put it up on an app store someplace relevant to your target audience for a small fee. Trademark key elements of the interface to force people who try to just clone your project and sell it themselves to avoid using any of your branding.

Again, stop trying to force people to give you money. Just make it really easy for them to do so. Gentle encouragement works. Trust that people know the equation and will support you if they like what you make. Remind them if they seem to forget.

Charge enough for the game before you make it that you won't lose money if all the copies after you make it are pirated. That's the very best way to handle piracy. As a bonus for this strategy, you can make sure people who pre-paid get something nifty (but preferably not gameplay unbalancing) for their faith in you before you even had a product.

Barring that, just ignore it. If you can't make enough money on the game, tell people that you weren't able to make enough money to pay for your time and are thinking of leaving the business. Give figures on how much you made (not on what percent you think was pirated) so people can see that you made squat on making something decent and useful for them.

If you want to, you can try offering people who can prove they don't have a pirated copy stuff that isn't necessary to play the game, but is nifty and shows off that they bought it. This works especially well if your game has a strong online component. This works even better if there's some sort of way to allow people to purchase this item in-game for the cost of the game.

Charge for access to the server if it's an online game.

Set it up so players are solving some random problem for you by playing the game. Make money selling that solution.

Stop trying to force people to give you money. Trust in them to give you money if you make something good enough. People know how it works. And a gentle education is usually all that's needed if they forget.

Only for the driver. It's clear from the number of stupid things that drivers do while driving that humans are bad drivers in general and most consider it a waste of time. We should stop letting humans drive. Then they can text all they want.

If you're trying to protect your big organization against foreign spies, yes. If you are a little guy who wants to communicate without having that communication be laid wide open for a large organization to see, then I think encryption is still pretty useful. Even if just because managing all those separate unique intrusions over a long period of time requires a lot more resources than just tapping into a trunk line.

I agree. Making it an acronym makes an annoying piece of jargon slightly inscrutable for people who aren't conversant with the field. APT in this case refers to Advanced Persistent Threat.