So, the "socially inept" engineers somehow manage to convince the customers that they (the engineers) are trustworthy.

I've seen numerous people associate "socially inept/awkward" as meaning "technically savvy"; it seems that much like eye-glasses have been stereotyped as meaning "smart" it seems that all Asperger's syndrome sufferers are all technical whiz-kids. I worked with a guy who was pretty average in IT, but had a very difficult time communicating, and was odd when he did: everyone insisted he was some sort of genius.
So when the teflon-suited sales guy shows up saying you need WhizBang5000 (tm) technology he's full of sh!t, but when the socially awkward guy says it, it's true.

If you can get around these three small problems, your plan is otherwise sound:
[X] spend money
[X] training
[X] (sales people) understanding tech

I'm less concerned with the agenda than I am that the entire study be open. Including the raw data, methodology etc. In this way, if they try and misinterpret the results others can peer review and point out the flaws. At this point it doesn't matter as much if they had an agenda: either their 'agenda' happens to be beneficial, or they can't back their nefarious agenda.

yes, withhold passwords on a network resulting in no measurable loss, get 20yrs of income as fine. Damage and destroy an ecosystem causing loss of animal life and depressing an entire area economically; get fines that amount to about 7~mos of income. That's called justice.

1. not because MSFT built a bad OS
2. download "Hot_Lesbos.avi.exe" and run it

I'd argue the second makes lie of the first.

I thought there were two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors.

...and PirateBay will still have an agreement with none of them, yet somehow will be the best option for getting content. huh.

well then as per usual, since those who make and implement the laws seem to see no problem (and download the responsibility to those they wronged) the answer is to find the individuals who are responsible for this, hack their wifi and pin something on them. All of them.

note: I'm not condoning any illegal activity here of course, 'cause according to the rules they made that would be wrong, and they'll come after you for pointing out the flaws in their system.

so there is a need to incentivize research and development.

If you start with this (incorrect) position, then of course patents seem necessary.

Who would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in research...

The simplest answer is that you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars if you do incremental improvement -- which is only possible if there are no patent protections. The patent system itself makes itself appear necessary. The simplest example of this is the inherent differences between how Linux (and most open source) is developed in contrast with MS operating system. By incrementally making small changes and releasing often Linux as surpassed Windows in terms of quality etc.

...could copy their invention and sell it for the marginal cost of production

There is a cost to copying which may not be as high as the original, but it is non-zero. Also, if you are the one innovating you will have the lead in market; during this time you must continue to innovate to maintain your lead. Your continued innovation will leave you at the front while others lag. But that's a lot more work than relying on government monopolies.

but a substantial number of these products would not exist.

Pure conjecture. But I will grant you that some products we have today might not exist in a non-patent world if you agree that in our patent-world there are products we could have and don't because of patent issues. Whether we are better or worse of as a result is purely imaginary. I suggest we are worse off as necessity is the mother of invention; so any product with a need that can't be met today due to patent is a loss to us.

While I have not read the original posts you reference, WTO, FTC, US Courts, EuroCommish, and EuroCourts are not agencies I would trust for original research.
So I see your Schumpeter and raise you a Boldrin & Levine; the research and studies they quote and use seem to strongly indicate that there is no gain by giving monopoly protection. And that's actual in numbers, not hypothesis or theoretical discussions.

People pirate software because they are cheap, unethical bastards. I swapped warez because I was a kid and my parents couldn't afford to buy me all the new games.

Your second sentence makes a lie of the first.
And I protest your making this an ethics issue. It's not; it's a business model problem. The ethical problem with (DRM/IP) is that they believe they control my property. That is the truly unethical act in this discussion. That you can no longer control your own property; that they continue to push through bad laws granting them more power over you and your property by lying and misleading is the ethics part of this conversation. That they continue to erode our rights and privacy in the name of their profits; by lying, misleading and buying politicians (bribery or "lobbying" as the legal!?! version is known) is the ethics issue.

Those servers should be free damn it!

The problem is that there's plenty of free servers/services on the 'net; GOOG gives me free e-mail, picture sharing, mapping/street-view etc. Free. So people can be forgiven if they don't believe that the servers can't be free.

It takes some real strength of character to look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge that you are ripping someone else off.

Sure, but I don't expect the sort of person who becomes head of a Monopoly Based Media Empire to ever have that sort of strength of character.

They really need to get rid of the foreign ownership ban.

We don't need foreign ownership; we need the socialise the last mile and let competition run at the retail level.

What Canada needs is foreign competition in the ISP market and to scale back the powers of the CRTC.

We don't need foreign competition: we need to make the last mile a public utility and let any Canadian owned company compete at the retail level. Then the CRTC can go back to managing spectrum allocation for a dying industry.
And since the topic was Cell Phone Service, I'd suggest that cell-towers also be run as a public utility; again letting whomever run a retail business.
And this isn't crazy; anyone out there want to privatize the road to their house? You get to pay a private company whatever they want to charge to drive on it...any takers?
We need to accept that there are natural monopolies and letting a non-profit run those is in our best interest.

Because sport is about human competition. There is a distinct difference between having a machine judge an outcome, or having a machine aid with planning and strategy and having a machine perform the athletic task.
Other sports (like automobile racing) have been deciding where the line is between "computer-aided" and "computer-performed" for some time now; it's only natural that other sports begin to grapple with this problem.
Ultimately there will always be a market for those that want to see how we compete against each other. So while I agree that there will be pure computer simulations in the future, I suspect they will grow boring very quickly and it will spark a renewed interest in raw unaided human competition.

evolution is just a theory

My issue is not with accepting that science is theory; it's with those that use this as the opening salvo in a Wookie-defense style argument ...
Your science is just a theory, but my religion is Truth as though agreeing that science is a theory also implicitly means that you acknowledge their religious beliefs as Truth.

It says that the assignment is testing knowledge, not understanding.

Of course testing understanding is again more difficult; The instructors in our training facilities (aka school) can't measure understanding, so we teach a series of useless facts without context, preparing the next set of cogs to man the wheels of the corporate machine.
This is why Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader works: the kids haven't yet forgotten the useless information we expect them to (temporarily) memorize.
I think we need to massively revisit how we educate. This and (pdf warning) this are about math, but I believe it actually applies quite generally.