Actually it was quite different than the OJ Simpson case, a council of judges was formed to judge this case, one of the defenders lawyers was arrested for being involved. One politician was accused but turned out to be innocent(or so they say). They took six years to review what they have supposedly because of the high number of witnesses, and many of the accused were found out to be innocent and freed. Also other politicians tried to politicize the case to attack the governing party. There is the possibility of a bad judgement but one can only know for sure after the decision is public.

Yes 2000 pages is an overkill, but word could handle it if the user was competent.

Of course I think colleges everywhere should create a MS Word PHD, for those poor users that after 10 years using a computer don't know that caps lock is the cause of their text being all in uppercase.

Well you never entered a court or any other public service then, most of them still use XP, and knowing Ms Office is almost requisition to work there.

Well we will only know for sure what proof they have when the document gets to the public, meanwhile we have only the customary whining about anything no matter how insignificant on both sides of the trial, but for outsiders today this is somewhat of a "tradition" in our country even outside the justice system. If you're not whining you're for sure conspiring to do something that will take the food out of the workers mouth.

And of course we have Carlos Cruz trying to save his ass, with his site and speeches, and being given more TV time than any other person involved in the case just because he was a national celebrity.

Have you ever heard of proofs by contradiction? Or more importantly counter examples?

For something better rephrased (for the sake of logical analysis) as "All venture capitalists would not invest if it wasn't for software patents" you only need a venture capitalist saying the opposite, in fact you have a whole bunch of them saying that.

You can say it isn't significant because "Most VCs would not invest..." but thats not the issue there, and I suspect that a well made statistical analysis would indicate a strong correlation between being a VC and believing in the uselessness of software patents.

Are they not? They teach you in school electrons roam around protozoa.

No it would flag as the wrong answer. Also most of the time its easy to check if someone cheated for sure, just asked about the purpose of every line, and tell them to modify the program to do something else, if they can't they cant even tell you what they've done they've cheated for sure.

I'm currently using OpenBSD on a 233mhz pentium mmx with 64megs of ram, with X running. You know why? Because most"lightweight" linux distro would not even run the installation right (have you ever tried to use a livecd with 64megs? why the hell would I want a livecd for old computers with low specifications? Oh wait there is no text install...).

Apart from deli linux and fluxbuntu(that is strangely more lightweight than damn small linux) that were kind of slow.

I meant there is no need to use...

I said done more in depth, after all you mentioned OS programming and I can't even begin to imagine the amount of hacking that one needs in Common LISP or Scheme to do what is normally done Assebly and in C or other mid/low level imperative language.
By depth I mean freedom to manipulate the computer with little abstractions getting in the way.

But the point was that there is need to use low level programming and make everything from the quantum level up, but it really helps to know how the abstractions ones uses are implemented(or at least know what is a linked list, heap, ...) to make the best fitting choice to a particular problem.

Even if that was true(and it isn't) there is plenty of people that don't know how to use a bow and an arrow.

Can you name anything that can be made in Lisp or other functional language that cannot be done more in depth in C/C++ or any other mid/low level imperative language?

Functional Languages are considered High Level for a reason.

Like what? Python, Ruby, Perl? Sometimes its really good to know how things work inside the language even if you're not going to use them.

I know how to construct most data structures by hand in a variety of languages, but I rarely do so in a real program, why? Because Java implements them well enough, and C++ has the STL to help me, but it helps to know what they are and how they work in order to know what should I use to solve a particular problem.

Open Source(in general not only as FSF puts it) is a really good concept, but it also have promoted using code that you don't quite understand and patching it up until "it works". The equivalent in physics would be blindly joining equations from others until you make a new theory.

Most programmers no longer learn in a way that promotes self sufficiency, they have to use library X but they don't need to know how it works, even thought most of the time the resulting software would be better and with a shorter development phase if they did.

A good programmer knows what he is doing, he does not expect things to magically work out due to a large amount of binary duct tape.