I once went on a tour through a lava tunnel in Iceland. Part of the tour was where the guide dimmed all the lights. The feeling of total darkness was quite strange. The guide said that if we would stay in this darkness for a month our eye muscles would atrophy and we would become blind.
I would expect Alati to at least feel a little physical effect from his stay in darkness.
It was sending off URLs visited by the host machine. Browsing history, essentially, which could be benign except that when your machine is inside a corp network you might be visiting all kinds of internal resources with URLs that shouldn’t be public/with sensitive info included in the resource locator, GET/POST contents, etc
No not really. If anything one could argue that Germany was not willing to devaluate because it would increase debt. However it would have still been smart to do.
Both the hyperinflation and the great depression did not happen because of war payments, maybe one could argue the german political class did stupid things because of the treaty.
But, if people keep using your software (or, for comparison, music), then there does seem to be value in it. Why then, shouldn't you be compensated for the work it took?
There are many forms of "value" outside that of currency.
Further the sole reason they may use my software it because it is free, any attempt to even charge $1 for it exceeds the monetary value of the software.
If you really are willing to change to a different software (or see/listen a different movie/music) just because you are not willing to pay a dollar, then the value of that software/song/movie really is lower than a dollar.
Because when this software/music, in its final form, only consist in pure information, it's nearly impossible to guarantee your compensation without giving companies the tools to interfer with essential freedoms.
I would expect Alati to at least feel a little physical effect from his stay in darkness.