I've done data recovery, it takes a lot less than a year for deleted files to degrade.
Not necessarily. Depending on the usage patterns, it could take even longer. I've found files that were deleted well over a year ago when doing an undelete. Files won't spontaneously degrade from a hard drive under normal conditions; they will sit there until they are overwritten.
...$100,000 per year; this is only $10K per month...
When I buy a cat, it's not "piracy" to let it procreate and give or sell the kittens, even if I'm reducing the potential profits of the cat breeder.
We'll see what the Feline Breeding Association of America has to say about that.
Or to plug a 3-prong cord into a 2-prong outlet..
I believe most of those adapters have a metal contact that will touch the screw in the middle of the outlet, which is grounded,
UK outlets also usually have some kind of safety flap thing, that prevents you from sticking a fork in the outlet. Again, I'm sure this extra bit of plastic costs a bit more... But I think I'd be willing to pay for that added safety.
You can get those in the US too.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.