This. If he really wanted to cause trouble for the FBI while remaining blameless, he could easily have claimed he thought it was a bomb. Then the bomb squad would come in, and quite possibly destroy it.
End result, FBI loses face, he gets to have tracker destroyed.

Three words: Layer Blending Options.
I could hand-light every layer in GIMP, or use the bumpmapping feature to achieve some semblance of artificial depth needed for textures, or I could just, you know, use something that allows me to do what I need to do 4-10x faster.
I used GIMP for about 10 years. I know what I'm talking about.
I bought myself a student PS license. To this day, I still do not even in the slightest regret that purchase.

GIMP isn't bad per se, (except for the name,) but the fact of the matter is that I get things done measurably faster in Photoshop, even though I had years of GIMP experience and no Photoshop experience until recently!

I can't remember where, but somewhere I read that humans naturally count in base 10 logarithm. I doubt we're wired to think properly in base 8. Leave the detailed calculations to the machines; that's what they're for.

"As far as I'm concerned the only pro-choice argument that makes sense is that the Government has no business telling us what we can do with our bodies."

As far as I'm concerned the only pro-choice argument that makes sense is that fetus != person.

I don't actually complain about ad tracking. I data mine my sales data often enough.

Same.

Notably, The Economist has a lot of content that's open and visible only to people who have RL subscriptions to it, but you're still able to buy selected reports for a reasonable fee if you want them, and a lot of the fresh content is available freely. They seem to be doing OK.

Strangely enough, I have clicked on some ads, and once I think I even made a purchase because of one. The thing is that, even if every single internet ad was relevant, there are far more ads than I have money to buy things, and most of them aren't advertising products that I would make a purchasing decision based on an advertisement.

I gotta say, when you're on the highway, "MacDonalds - Exit 32, 2 miles" is pretty relevant. It's information that's actually useful to me about a product I actually want. If internet ads were like that, I'd click on a lot more of them.

"The Left ... they have a grudge against anyone with moral principles"
I'm not sure if you're trolling, or if you really just don't get it. But then, if you really believe what you just posted, there's no helping you.
(Is love with someone sterile also a perversion? Et cetera. It's the same tired arguments all over again.) You have nothing of value to offer for the discussion.

He does this because he wants to re-use the libraries he's written. You want him to waste everyone's time rewriting what is essentially the same library for each customer? How is that the right thing to do?
Your comparison to a physical product isn't valid. It's more like he'd own the blueprints to the cars, the blueprints for basic components he designed that can be adapted into what the client wants, and the machinery to make the cars that he's developed over the years. And Ford (a car-maker) wouldn't be the customer. It'd be more like UPS. He'd then grant UPS the rights to make more cars of this type, and the ability to modify the blueprints, for their own use.

No sane individual would trade something for money they can't use. Money almost universally comes from trading it for goods/services. It could maybe be of use that way to a museum.
That, and federal reserve notes are "legal tender for all debts public and private."

I sell licenses to software I write, and I'm glad I'm able to do so.

In fact, they should create a public rootkit registry so malware authors can submit their malware for compatibility testing with new Microsoft patches.

The grandparent doesn't understand the purpose of a State.

What you're saying implies rights come from force. That would disagree with ScentCone's statement that rights don't come from government.