"If you're selling a $500,000 software product; going after pirates is not a winning business strategy -- it's figuring out, why the heck you can't pitch your product to legal buyers, and make your desired revenue there. Either the pricing is all wrong, or your marketing or product targetting is all wrong. "

That is operating on the assumption that the pricing is wrong. Photoshop, Office and Visual Studio are $1000 because many casual users and small businesses will pirate the product or install the office's software on a personal computer (I'm not saying this is right, but I know too many photoshop thieves), but most medium-sized and large businesses and government will purchase the product.

The pricing isn't wrong, the pricing adapted to the marketplace in a way that rewards very high cost and fewer sales.

And super-expensive software often occurs in small markets where the seller is very reliant on trade secrets and does not want their product floating around in the wild for competitors to study, typically in very lucrative and super-specialized niche markets.

He should have done the transactions in bitcoin.

Old encyclopedias circa 1960 listed Tunguska as a possibly caused by anti-matter.

Which would have been more interesting than the ho-hum "just a meteor" explanation.

Beets -5% profit margins!

Just remember the safety advice and you'll be ok: Don't stick your penis in it.

Congrats on trying to quantum entangle spaghetti sauce and potato salad. It didn't work, but was entertaining to see the attempt ...

+14 ... the problem with the common man debating science issues is that neither side knows what they are talking about, and don't have the courage to admit it.

Over javascript? That is just one or two steps above being "elite" at HTML.

Neither Samsung or Apple lose. Some other company X, Y or Z that would like to grow market-share or compete against Samsung loses because both Apple and Samsung are affirmed by the courts to have patents that "count" to participate in the market in a specific way.

Patent reform actually isn't in anyone's interest --- not anyone who would take the time and effort and initiative to do something about it, except possibly Google (which is against all intellectual property and internet laws as a nature of their business model).

This crazy patent system rewards large companies, individuals, lawyers and politicians --- and does not hurt non-commercial works (open source included) because lawyers don't sue where there is no money (#1 rule of lawyers).

There is no evidence any of these anti-patent sentiments are going anywhere, and our messed up patent system generates short term monopolies which spur business growth.

It is a terrible system, but one with no true losers except in theory --- but this theory can't manifest in reality (i.e. no one will bother to sue you unless you make it big, if you made it big you were successful anyway).

An occasional patent troll annoys Microsoft or RIM, gets a settlement that is of no practical concern to target (Microsoft doesn't cry over 60 million). If you are a growing company, you pay the license fees for patents you need and expense it and move on.

Functionally, this means the ultimate end of javascript. Because this means even ultimately secure code does not mean it can be trusted.

Nor does it mean secure code isn't malicious, it just isn't malicious in the present sense of the word ....

And that new abuse that does not fit the historical definition is coming down the pipeline.

I would like to believe you didn't originate that convoluted stinkball of crap and instead read it in a D&D or Pokemon rulebook. If you made it up yourself, may you never reproduce, although I am thinking this concern is not a problem. What hole do barnacle-headed nimrods with canasta-like rules for voting come from?

So, uh, is this like how on Star Trek TNG that Geordi LaForge could auto-magically solve any problem by reversing the polarity or a reverse tachyon pulse.

Or maybe someone can find a smurf that farts IBM's good ole' pixie dust?

And both of those examples are far more realistic that yours. Don't fault me, I'm just the messenger. You're the one that posted what you did and that means it is subject to peer review, unfortunately no pixie-dust farting smurf was available so my critique will have to suffice. But this is slashdot and perhaps one of those will yet show ....

"'I've never doubted that making the recording was ethical.'"

The cornerstone of ethics is that is the idea they don't bend to suit your whims. If we all act "low class" and just do whatever we justify to ourselves, the world will be headed into the gutter (even faster than now).

But at the end of the day, once something becomes successful it loses its identity.

Loss of anonymity and regulation happens to anything that becomes large enough to be noticed.