yes, and those are "rich" people, much richer than the average consumer, especially when you take in account countries such as China or India.

I believe that the winning entries for the design & dev are sold by topcoder to various companies. Personally, I think it is very immoral.

How is this immoral? They tell you how it works upfront, they pay you one-off for winning the competition, and they pay you royalties when companies buy the software. It would be immoral to judge the best entry as being not up to scratch, not pay out, and still sell it on, but that's not what happens. (the contest is re-run in that case)

Besides, it's what you call a (sustainable) business model.

Are you sure that encryption, not hashing, is what you need? I am not exactly sure what you are planning to do, but you can take a look at XTEA or TEA (Tiny Encryption Algorithm).

Now that this fact is known, it will be arbitraged away. :)

I have read on a previous comment in another story about "shorting bonds and longing stocks" but this was given as an example of a bad idea. Why is it so? If in the long term stocks outperform bonds wouldn't this actually be a good strategy for a long-term investor? Obviously the risks would be higher, but since it is over the long term it shouldn't matter, right?

If you go back to that thread, it concludes that there is indeed a place for equities in a balanced portfolio. Your point is exactly the one I was trying to make!