In cases where people are just potential suspects, cops may try to determine if the suspect is lying or not but that's not the situation here. In these kinds of cases, the cops already have the logs which are considered sufficient evidence for the arrest.
For interrogations following an arrest, the process is not meant to determine if you are lying or not. It's meant to get that final piece of evidence that makes the case a slam dunk: your confession. So they make you feel uncomfortable, scared, and desperate to leave. Once they get you in that mind frame, they make it seem that the best way for you to get out of this scary situation is to start talking, and then steer you into the hope that you can just go home if you admit to the crime. This tactic even works on innocent people. Just check out the Innocence Project and you'll see plenty of cases where an innocent person ADMITTED IN WRITING to doing the crime after a long interview. Of course, once they came to their senses, they try to take it back but it's too late.
I'm glad somebody else mentioned swordfish. How about that "supercomputer" they let him use? I guess their IT guy decided buying a bunch of 15" LCDs was easier than figuring out how to switch to a reasonable os. Give him a raise.
Having to regularly rewrite unit tests indicates poor design in the first place. Of course, if your company has very loose design rules, throw the unit tests out the window.
I've had good and bad experiences with QA people. It seems like the best QA people are also really good programmers and designers. They come along, see why you wrote the code the way you did, and think of good test cases that you may have forgotten.
Bad QA guys don't understand the language (boo, gui testers) and have no design experience. Usually bad QA people are found at companies that treat QA like second-class citizens. If your programmers are way out of the QA guys' league, QA isn't going to find many interesting issues (and I promise you, there are interesting issues to be found).
I'm going to go with not many, Bob. Which raise another issue: does designing, programming, and selling a machine that kills more or less indiscriminately make one culpable for its actions? Gun rights activists in the US claim that it's not guns that kill people. What if they do?
Of course, if those companies that manufacture knock-off Samsung electronics can just make a complimentary model that throws rocks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be fully automated to last forever!
What did the fingers say to the face? SLAPP! He's Matt Katzer, b.
Seriously though, these kinds of legal situations didn't come about by pure chance. Part of the reason big venture capital firms have all-star attorneys is that they want to create a certain legal expense bar under which no one can sue them (or companies they own). If the public knows that they're going to have to spend at least $150k to sue a company, and their claim is less than that, very few lawyers will pick up the case unless it is almost certain to result in a decisive victory. So they pay 15 attorney's half a million a year, and they save themselves the vast majority of lawsuits against them.
All I can say is give the lawyers a break. Part of their job is to deter lawsuits. They argue a position and a judge determines if it is valid. By the nature of their jobs, they must be given the ability to argue a viewpoint. That said, we can get rid of lawyers if we feel they are playing too dirty: send them letters urging them to run for office. Hopefully, the judge will eventually give plenty of money back to the good guys.
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In cases where people are just potential suspects, cops may try to determine if the suspect is lying or not but that's not the situation here. In these kinds of cases, the cops already have the logs which are considered sufficient evidence for the arrest.
For interrogations following an arrest, the process is not meant to determine if you are lying or not. It's meant to get that final piece of evidence that makes the case a slam dunk: your confession. So they make you feel uncomfortable, scared, and desperate to leave. Once they get you in that mind frame, they make it seem that the best way for you to get out of this scary situation is to start talking, and then steer you into the hope that you can just go home if you admit to the crime. This tactic even works on innocent people. Just check out the Innocence Project and you'll see plenty of cases where an innocent person ADMITTED IN WRITING to doing the crime after a long interview. Of course, once they came to their senses, they try to take it back but it's too late.
I'm glad somebody else mentioned swordfish. How about that "supercomputer" they let him use? I guess their IT guy decided buying a bunch of 15" LCDs was easier than figuring out how to switch to a reasonable os. Give him a raise.
Having to regularly rewrite unit tests indicates poor design in the first place. Of course, if your company has very loose design rules, throw the unit tests out the window.
I've had good and bad experiences with QA people. It seems like the best QA people are also really good programmers and designers. They come along, see why you wrote the code the way you did, and think of good test cases that you may have forgotten.
Bad QA guys don't understand the language (boo, gui testers) and have no design experience. Usually bad QA people are found at companies that treat QA like second-class citizens. If your programmers are way out of the QA guys' league, QA isn't going to find many interesting issues (and I promise you, there are interesting issues to be found).
Plus, those briefcase auto-guns can easily be disabled by tossing a grenade around the corner. Don't they know Kim Jong Il loves the N64?
I'm going to go with not many, Bob. Which raise another issue: does designing, programming, and selling a machine that kills more or less indiscriminately make one culpable for its actions? Gun rights activists in the US claim that it's not guns that kill people. What if they do?
Of course, if those companies that manufacture knock-off Samsung electronics can just make a complimentary model that throws rocks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be fully automated to last forever!
What did the fingers say to the face? SLAPP! He's Matt Katzer, b.
Seriously though, these kinds of legal situations didn't come about by pure chance. Part of the reason big venture capital firms have all-star attorneys is that they want to create a certain legal expense bar under which no one can sue them (or companies they own). If the public knows that they're going to have to spend at least $150k to sue a company, and their claim is less than that, very few lawyers will pick up the case unless it is almost certain to result in a decisive victory. So they pay 15 attorney's half a million a year, and they save themselves the vast majority of lawsuits against them.
All I can say is give the lawyers a break. Part of their job is to deter lawsuits. They argue a position and a judge determines if it is valid. By the nature of their jobs, they must be given the ability to argue a viewpoint. That said, we can get rid of lawyers if we feel they are playing too dirty: send them letters urging them to run for office. Hopefully, the judge will eventually give plenty of money back to the good guys.