Never forget how many shipyards have closed in the USA during the last 70 years. And how long it takes to train new workers to construct that kind of ships.

'nuff said

'Once every 500 years' is not equal to 'with 500 years interval'. The next Carrington Event could be tomorrow.

Worse, even events less powerful than the Carrington Event occur more frequently than the Carrington Event and can cause significant damage to our high voltage infrastructure.

Only for one axis of rotation. That's not enough.

No - the sensors were 'angular velocity sensors'. They do not measure orientation but change of orientation. Is a bit more difficult to check pre-launch than an orientation sensor.

If there is spyware on a machine, doing it's dirty thing without the users knowledge or consent, then any piece of event logging, keystroke logging or pictures taken is suspect. It could be produced by the user, by other spyware, or by a hacker with access to the machine.

The very fact that the 'evidence' is collected by spyware is full evidence that spyware is performing activities the user is unaware about. It implicitely proofs the machine is not under full user control. It therefore proofs not all actions performed at the machine are endorsed by the user.

Since one piece of spyware/malware managed to get installed on the computer means users anti virus and anti malware software is not up to its task. If that is the case, then the installation of other spyware/malware packages is very likely. Meaning there is reasonable doubt about who or what did a download.
And you can not convict a suspect if there is reasonable doubt - not yet anyway.

A picture of the user sitting at the keyboard is no evidence if other software/spyware capable of downloading copyrighted has been installed (without user knowledge or consent) at the same computer.

All the picture proofs is that said user was using the computer at a certain point in time. It doesn't proof the user was doing the download of the copyrighted material. If there was other spyware running at the computer, then that other piece of spyware could be performing the download. All recorded keystrokes, mouse clicks and other logged event are suspect if spyware packages are running at the a machine.
If such a picture were to be accepted as 'evidence' in court, then hackers could easily frame anybody they dislike. Just install the hackers spyware package, spoof some 'evidence' towards the corporate spyware and another sucker gets owned.

I dislike your solution for the problem.

However, I hate the problem more than I dislike the solution.

No, it can't. Since the TFA talks about "a group of 13 industry associations", we would get every one of these industry associations to install it's own spyware package on your machine.
So if copyrights were to be infringed from your machine, who can prove that YOU were to one to do it, and not one of the spyware packages? All one can prove is that it happened from your machine, not WHO or WHAT did it. A compromised system is by definition out of your control.

You need an OS plus development software plus (possible) database software and webserver software to build your software product. Each of these software products you use has its own end-of-support data. You should never promise support on your product beyond the end-of-support date for a software product needed to support your product. E.g.: if fixing an issue with your product requires fixing an issue with the OS, and the OS is out of support, then you are out of luck.

Any support on your product beyond the end-of-support date for a product needed to perform this support should be on a best effort basis, never on result commitment basis.
Also consider increasing your hourly rate by 10% for each year beyond the end-of-support date of the products you use - this encourages your client to buy an upgrade to a new version of your product, build with current tools.

Secunia PSI tool ( http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ ) is very usefull, I agree. It knows the most common software products, so I have to manually take care over a rather small list of software products.
IMHO it should come preinstalled on every new Windows machine.

Nope.

Fixed price contract for custom software - so no competitors for that project, and no other clients for that piece of software.

A better argument would be: Delivering a B would hurt our long term reputation.
Works only with managers who think long term (next project and beyond), not short term (next bonus).

It all comes down to managing your manager - this can be much harder than writing level A code :-) .

Wrong.

It's not about lazy programmers, it's all about calculating managers.

To cite one of my managers during a project review:
Next time you're not going to perfect our code like you did on this project. If we measure software quality on an A to F scale, and if our client is satisfied with quality level C, then stop improving your code once you hit that C level. Going for the A will only increase project cost, but not our revenues..