In one of my ASIC design classes, it was practically impossible for the professor to really go through everyone's design and ensure that they all worked properly - they were far too complicated. Likewise, it was difficult for students to ensure, while designing things, that the chip itself also worked as intended, because it was an error correction algorithm being implemented, so you had to sort of KNOW what a desired output would be. So the professor gave a sample input, and the intended output for this input, so that people could make sure their chips worked when they would run them in the design software.

On the turn-in day, everyone turned in their huge heaps of paper that covered their design - again, practically impossible for the professor to 100% go through. Included also was a printout of everyone's signals within the chip - intermediate ones, and the final output. And of course, >95% of the things turned in gave the correct output and had everything correct inside.

So the professor starts his lecture, and then stops and says "OK, everyone up!" And we headed to the computer lab, where he made everyone sit down in front of a computer, one by one, load up their chip, and gave a new input string (maybe 300-400 bits), and made each person run it.

Approximately half the class had the output of their chip be the same output for the original "sample" input he had given so people could test - that is, their entire big ASIC (because it had to LOOK complex or it would be too obvious it didn't do anything) was essentially a giant set of fake elements which actually did nothing except give the appropriate output - for the ONE sample input.

I have to admit, mine worked for the original input, but when he gave the new input, my output was correct for the first 399 bits - but the 400th was incorrect. It should have been a 1, I had a 0. It seems that no matter what the input was, my last bit (regardless of the number of input bits) had a stuck-at-0 fault. But since his sole sample input had a 0 as the final output bit, I never detected the fault. However, in this "second sample", the last 30 or so output bits were all 1's, and the difference between 29 '1" bits in a row and 30 "1" bits in a row in terms of looking at a long line quickly (as the professor was) is not noticeable. I saw it, but the professor didn't, and I got credit for the chip.

I agreed with you (but thought it was all very obvious) up to this point:

I remember a friend of mine getting suspended in elementary school for saying "I wish you would die" to someone who had been bullying them.

Actually, I think it IS a horrible and dangerous attitude when a kid says something like that. It may not be much of a threat then, but it shows that the child is being allowed to mature without the necessary coping skills for teenage and adult relationships, which she'll one day have to deal with. I think the parent who taught the kid this kind of attitude should be focused on more than the kid, but definitely, I think kids with this sort of behaviour should be detected, taken aside, and taught a wiser approach to life.

Sheesh. I remember when I was in either kindergarten or first grade, someone was bullying me, and I said to them "The world would be a better place if you were dead." They started crying (at the time, all I was thinking was "Ha! That stopped them."), and went to a teacher, who pulled me aside, and explained to me the actual ramifications of what I had said. Hell, I was in first grade. At that time parents still tell you that the dog "ran away" rather than died, and even if they had, you don't always understand at that age what death really means. But when the teacher told me that what I said was inappropriate, and I asked my parents about it later, I - at least as far as I could at that time - understood what was up and I didn't do it again. That's all that needed to happen. It makes me shiver to think that had that happened today - 20 years later - instead of then, it isn't unlikely that I'd have been hauled away and suspended.

I recall another case in 2nd grade where we were asked to draw a real flag we had seen (either in person or in pictures) that wasn't the American flag. Most people drew the state flag, or the Canadian or British flag. I didn't know any of those. I didn't even know the state flag at the time. But I had seen my parents watching a documentary on World War II (although I didn't really pay attention) so I drew the only other flag I knew - the Nazi one. The teacher took it away, pulled me aside and explained a bit about World War II, and that that particular flag wasn't appropriate, and told me to ask my parents about it when I got home, which I did, and it was clear that it wasn't really appropriate for school. Simple. She gave me a book of flags and I picke a different one and drew it. Kids really can be quite understanding if you give actual explanations beyond "BECAUSE WE SAID SO". Again, today, I'd probably have been expelled before even being told why what I had drawn was inappropriate.

I can think of numerous things that I saw happen to all sorts of students back in school where the "proper response" - the teacher/administrator coming in and being the 'adult' - led to long-standing resolutions where kids understood what was up. Things like suspension were rare and for the most severe cases. But these days you don't see it - the fear of lawsuits, the fear of decision-making, has led to a school culture where a single aspirin pill may as well be 2 kg of heroin, and a plastic knife may as well be a machine gun with cyanide-tipped bullets.

'I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn't work perfectly,' says Wardell, 'it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That's when a lot of the sales take place and that's when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without "warez" copies circulating on the Web.'"

Let us consider, for a moment, a DRM-loaded game from the past year.

Spore.

Its DRM was considered by some to be so limiting that some people simply never played the game. People were exasperated that, at release, it allowed only one user account per copy. That installs couldn't be "restored" by uninstalling the game (many of these things have been added since).

OK, so all that said, copies of Spore were still readily available for download a week prior to release on torrent sites all over the world. Despite cumbersome DRM, that in some cases prevented actual customers from being able to extract full enjoyment from the product they purchased, anyone that wanted a DRM-free copy could still have gotten one prior to the release of the game.

Lesson: It. Doesn't. Work.

Maybe...maybe it prevents someone from taking the game to a friend's house and installing it, or the like. But it isn't preventing wide-scale piracy, even during that "critical first week".

That is the best game ever. Achievement Unlocked!

The issue I have here is that it seems like the fact that this is just opinion is no longer relevant - the poster went there, didn't like it, and posted so, and suddenly it's defamatory. What if that was their actual opinion of what happened? Why would someone make that up?

It feels like everything even a tiny bit negative is suddenly grounds for a lawsuit.

Food critic gives a bad review? Don't make better food, sue the critic, the newspaper, and the corporation that owns it for defamation, even if the fries WERE soggy that day.

It seems like the issue is it's way cheaper to try and suppress negative information (even if it's simply random people's opinions) - and furthermore make it clear that it will be extremely costly to even utter such information, by way of having to defend oneself in court, even for pure opinion-laced statements. Some states, if I recall, have laws and remedies available when companies sue under such circumstances, but many, it seems, do not.

And hell - I've noticed that in some countries, forget opinion - it's getting to the point where even truth is no longer an absolute defense to libel, because truthful statements can still be "defamatory".

"Fame" and "Respect" shouldn't be a right just via the existence of a person or company, it's one of those things that is (or used to be) hard to earn, and easy to lose. What's the point of having a review or sharing thoughts if any negative one leads to a lawsuit?

The reality of government interference makes this unlikely.

To whit:

First, in many areas, it simply isn't possible for competition to arise because deals have been made with local government preventing additional licenses from being granted - Verizon, for example, has had difficulties getting FiOS into some areas because cable companies have simply paid off the local government to block any and all other possible licensees. Since in any area each provider must be licensed at the city, county, state, and federal level, any one of those entities can block expansion, and they do. If there's only one or two providers (for example, one cable and one DSL), people could lose access to content they want and have no way to obtain it due to lack of competing service.

Second, the existing pipes were laid often with heavy subsidies from federal, state, and local governments, making it difficult for a competitor to lay their own infrastructure. If existing Company A laid down their lines with government subsidies, in the event that a competitor can even get a license to operate, Company B will generally get no such subsidies, and thus may have to charge so much more for service (to pay the cost of laying the lines) that no one would choose them over Company A - thus they don't bother to try to lay them in the first place.

I would say that in the case where traffic can be assured to be going from Point A to Point B without going through any lines or equipment that was subsidized by US taxpayer, and in an area where there is no local or state government preventing suitable competition for service, one could argue that the entities involved should be able to the control the traffic. Since that is, in today's world, practically impossible, I believe they should remain neutral.

Right now, every time it is more convenient for someone to say "It's a license! Not a 'sale'!", they get to say that. It's in the EULA!

Yet every time it's more convenient for them to say "You bought it! It's yours!", they get to say that too.

If you lose a book, no one would say you get a free book - you bought the book. Sure the book is covered by copyright, but that doesn't mean you "licensed" the book. You lose it, then you have to get another one.

But with software, if you lose it, it's "Oh, sorry, you bought the software, it would be piracy to get another." It's in their favor to consider it "yours" for that. But in almost every other way, it's a "License!" that they have full control over.

IMO, one or the other. If it's just a license, then as long as it's registered in some way, if I lose it, give me a new one. If it's mine, then let me sell it when I'm done.

Right now, the corporation wins no matter what I do.

I'm surprised that the employment contracts for those employees did not stipulate that all employee email passing through their systems was subject to search.

Perhaps, in Finland, one cannot sign away this particular right.

After all, many employment contracts in the US specify that one's job is "at-will" and one can be fired at any time for any reason (mine does). However, signing such a contract still leaves you with rights that the government considers as inviolate, such as the right not to be fired due to your race. No amount of signing, even if the contract specifically states "You sign away this specific right" can take some enumerated rights from you.

Perhaps in Finland, the right not to be spied upon by one's employer is such a right. I don't know that, but if Nokia has multiple times been chastised for doing this, one might assume that could be the case.

All software has bugs. The existence of those bugs doesn't necessarily mean that a jury will find reasonable doubt. The defense can argue it, just like the defense will argue that a radar gun was wrong. But it doesn't always work. Lots of people are convicted on DNA evidence, and you can bet that the defense almost always brings up "But the machine could be wrong!" argument. But the technicians generally have to take the stand and defend what they're doing, and the algorithms can be challenged (famously, during the OJ trial).

In this case, given the presumption should be of innocence, shouldn't the accused have the ability to at least make the argument?

Let's make a stupid example.

Everyone remembers the Zune fiasco. The Zune, in essence, is a closed-source black-box music player. You put music in, it plays it, and people don't care about the internals. Everyone - including its manufacturer! - assumed it was working fine and everything was great.

Then, one day, it turns out that one particular model, running one particular firmware, completely messed up, and only on that day. If you didn't turn yours on at all that day, or had a different model, you might not have even known there was a problem. If you ran a different firmware, you might not have known there was a problem. But there was.

The Zune bug wasn't a calamity because music players aren't sending people to jail. But these breathalyzer machines are - in some cases they are the State's only evidence. Who knows whether or not on all leap days they accidentally add 0.03 to the breath test results? What if, after a night of use, their results get skewed upward or downward due to residual alcohol inside the detector? What if there's a register that doesn't get cleared if the officer forgets to do something and it skews the results?

A bug that affects the results doesn't have to be as obvious as the Zune bug in order to exist.

These breathalyzer machines run software that has been patched, patched, and patched again. What specifically were the patches fixing (after all, there has to be a good reason to patch a breathalyzer machine)? What was wrong previously that needed to be patched? Prior to a given patch, was there a possibility of error? Was the one a given suspect was tested on patched? Was the machine re-calibrated after each patch? Does the source code after patch #3 but before patch #4 have a bug that leads to errors, but only on Thursdays from 2:00 to 3:00 AM?

The fact is the manufacturer doesn't want to answer any of these questions, nor allow any 3rd party to examine the things and answer them, and is willing to endure millions of dollars in contempt fines rather than answer them?

To me, that's "reasonable doubt" that the machines aren't everything the manufacturer claims they are.

I had this issue when I canceled my cell phone with Sprint a few years ago. I was getting paperless bills, and paying online. However, the instant I canceled, even though I knew I would have one final pro-rated bill, my account on their website was locked out.

Calling them to ask to send a bill on paper was useless - once they hear you aren't a customer and aren't interested in signing up again you're put into the "On Hold Forever" queue.

Got an email a month later saying I hadn't paid, but of course every email says "Do not reply to this email - if you have questions, log into your account", which didn't exist.

I finally sent them a check for what my standard monthly bill is, knowing it was too much. Since then, for three years, they've been sending me a monthly statement, by snail mail, telling me they owe me about eight dollars. Every month, for three years. Just send me a check!

As long as a patent examiner's job performance is based on how many applications they can process, the problems are not going to go away. Change the presumption of validity to "Not valid", and you're still going to have problems.

Living in Washington, D.C., I know quite a few people who work in the patent office. They are, generally, quite competent people. Many of them have fairly scientific minds and are technically savvy. And many of them like their jobs, and think it's quite neat that they get to learn about things on the forefront of technology.

However, they also know that they are judged by the Powers That Be not based on whether or not they make the "right" decision, but rather on whether or not they process enough applications when compared to the "average" examiner. If one decision requires relatively little paperwork, and the other requires a mountain of paperwork, taking up lots of time, followed by an inevitable challenge (or even lawsuit) by the aggrieved party, well, some examiners are simply going to start rubber-stamping everything in front of them. They're under enormous pressure to increase the rate at which they process applications, and the only way to do that is accept more, and reject less.

It becomes a vicious circle - examiners know they're judged based on whether or not they process enough applications. Therefore, some such examiners, in order to look "the best", are going to start blazing through applications, approving them all, to improve their numbers. This, of course, raises the "average", forcing everyone else to spend less time examining, and to make the easy decision.

Changing the presumption of validity would simply make the "easy" decision a "reject", and while I think it's better to reject them offhand (and have a review) than accept everything by default (leading to patent trolls and settlements rather than reexamination of a patent), it still doesn't solve the problem.

Patent examiners need to be reviewed based on the quality of their work, not just the speed by which they process it.