People agree to pay for things outside of their control all the time. Consider the contract you have with your auto insurance company, for example, in which they agree to pay in the event that you get into an accident. If you agree to the terms of your own free will, in the absence of fraud or duress, you should assume that they're binding, at least morally if not legally. The real problem would be if they were trying to fine the people posting negative reviews directly, when they weren't a party to the contract.

I see no reason why this contract shouldn't be considered binding—which is not to say that I think it's a good idea. I find it a bit surprising that they still have any customers after pulling a stunt like this, which was a clear sign of desperation in its own right. One doesn''t go to such lengths to suppress negative reviews unless one has something to hide.

In that particular case, perhaps, but they have their own interests and obligations outside the case which may be harmed by turning over the documents. For example, in this case compliance with the order could conceivably place Microsoft in violation of foreign data privacy laws, which this court cannot grant immunity from as it lacks jurisdiction.

Given that you're compelled to comply regardless, under threat of more or less whatever punishment the court happens to deem fit, there isn't much scope for negotiation. The court holds all the cards. You can ask for consideration, but there isn't much you can do about it if they refuse.

In case it wasn't obvious, I am wholly opposed to dragging third-parties into a case against their will when they haven't even been accused of any wrongdoing. That includes both compulsory testimony and the involuntary production of evidence. The courts exist to resolve disputes and protect rights, not to create new disputes and violate rights.

That sounds like a great idea. Since you're coding for the least common denominator, you obviously get none of the benefits of the target language, while still suffering from all of its issues, plus whatever additional issues are introduced by your under-spec'd and idiosyncratic "meta language" and "meta compiler".

To top it off, no one else will ever be able to maintain or build on what you write, so you're stuck with that job forever, unable to move on to something better—or at least until TPTB wake up and realize that it's far more trouble than it's worth and throw it out in favor of something which is properly idiomatic and standardized and which doesn't make them wholly dependent on you and your "meta compiler".

No thanks.

I'm not sure that's exactly the same thing. First, perhaps I'm just reading too much into your wording, but it sounds like you would have to admit guilt, as opposed to the court ruling against you for failure to comply while you continue to maintain your innocence. Second, and more importantly, only the defendant can "stipulate in court to the prosecution's allegations". What about subpoenas issued to third parties who would otherwise not have anything at stake? Like Microsoft in this case—they aren't the defendant, they're just holding the data.

The only reasonable way to handle this, so far as I can see, would be for the court to order the actual defendant in the case to direct Microsoft to turn over the data, or in extreme cases to do so in the defendant's stead. Microsoft would then be following the directions of their customer according to the terms of their contract, and not under the duress of a court order.

And this is pretty much the entire problem, right here. The very concept of "contempt of court"—arbitrary punishments handed out by judges at their sole discretion, with no consideration for proportionality or due process—runs counter to the principle of rule of law. I have no problem with a court saying that if you refuse to turn over relevant documents then they will be assumed to be as damaging as possible to your case. I do have a problem with them saying that if you don't turn over the documents you'll be subject to potentially indefinite jail time and fines in excess of whatever damages you were accused of inflicting on the other party.

Well, that and the fact that they seem to be trying to apply subpoena rules to a search warrant. A search warrant doesn't impose any obligations beyond staying out of law enforcement's way while they search the place. A subpoena, on the other hand, is an order for someone within the court's jurisdiction to testify or produce evidence. This is being described as a search warrant for reasons that are not at all clear to me, but the court apparently wants the company to perform the search itself and produce evidence as if it were subpoenaed.

I agree with you here, but as I see it, people weren't manipulated into panicking; they were manipulated into thinking that there was a fire. The panicking and its consequences were a separate matter, and their own fault, not that of whoever shouted "fire".

I agree, but much like free will itself, I don't see that we have any real choice except to extend people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are in control of their own actions, even if it seems likely that their response was more or less "automatic". If you take away someone's personal responsibility, you also take away their right to self-determination, reducing them to the level of animals. So long as people want to be treated as people, they have to take responsibility for their actions, even if those actions were driven by instinct rather than logic.

Perhaps not, but the supposed "crime" was falsely shouting "fire", and the panic would have happened even if there really was a fire. In any case, no one forced the other patrons to panic. If they did, it was entirely their own fault, and they—not whoever shouted "fire"—are wholly responsible for the consequences.

Wrong on both counts. It is neither a sufficient condition, since people could simply refrain from panicking despite the (maybe false) warning, nor a necessary one, as there could be a panic even if the warning was true, or for that matter without anyone shouting "fire" at all.

Obviously, the person who committed the act. Otherwise one would be forced into the absurd conclusion that property owners are at least partly responsible for the theft of their property, since simply by having it they give potential thieves an incentive to steal. The same could be said of many other crimes. Responsibility rests with the one whose choices led directly to the outcome. Merely offering an incentive does not make one responsible for the consequences of someone else's choice.

If you manipulate someone by giving them false information, that could be said to take away their ability to choose freely, making you responsible for the consequences when they make the right choice given the information you provided and harm results because it was false. However, that does not apply here, because trampling others in one's haste to escape is something one would be responsible for even if the fire were real; the harm was not due to the information being false.

None of which will matter unless you have an unwanted local service listening on those ports. On the other hand, if there is a malicious service inside your network which wants to allow incoming connections, there are any number of ways to implement NAT traversal. It's even fairly common for common services to incorporate NAT traversal these days due to the prevalence of NAT and the ways it breaks network routing. If you want to reliably filter traffic—even incoming traffic—you need a proper firewall customized to your traffic requirements, NAT or no NAT.

The electrons are being run through the experiment one at a time, so they can't be interfering with each other. There is no "electron build up"; even if you tore the apparatus down and rebuilt it from scratch each time, guaranteeing that there was no leftover state from previous experiments, you'd still get the same results.

You only get one discrete "hit" per electron, but the location varies according to some statistical distribution—and that distribution, measured over a series of single-electron experiments, matches what one would expect for interfering wave patterns.

Don't forget that analog is lossy too; there is no such thing as a signal with infinite bandwidth in the real world. Per the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, a discrete (digital) signal with sampling rate f is equivalent to a continuous (analog) signal with bandwidth f/2. In other words, you're not losing anything by sampling a low-pass-filtered signal at 44.1 kHz unless you care about frequencies above 22 kHz. The range of human hearing is generally considered to max out at around 20 kHz; if you want to go higher, you'll probably need to invest in specialized amplifiers and speakers (not to mention a scope to detect the difference).

You may not have used the word "absolute", but you did speak of "Palestinians in Gaza" as if they were a homogeneous group of Hamas supporters:

If I understand correctly, this is the "loophole" that MP3 player were able to take advantage of. Since they only receive and store audio data, and don't transmit it for storage anywhere else, they effectively implement a system which is strictly more limited than what the SCMS would permit: they can't make copies regardless of copyright or generation status. The same argument should apply to car entertainment systems, which only store and play back audio from CDs without providing any way to move the audio data off the device.

The fact remains that while support for Hamas in Gaza may be higher than for Palestine as a whole, it's still well short of absolute. There are plenty of Palestinian citizens in Gaza who do not deserve any blame for the actions of Hamas.

I wasn't trying to imply that the election was illegitimate; at least, no more so than any other plurality-based democratic election[1]. Possible duress aside, Hamas did end up with the most votes. I only meant that with less than half of the population actually voting in favor of Hamas, the majority are not to blame for putting Hamas in power. The unfair blame and possible duress issues were my only points, so we would appear to be in complete agreement.

[1] I'd personally prefer a system where the winner was the least objectionable candidate, which favors centrist positions with broad support, rather than a mere plurality out of voters' first picks, which favors the extremes.