"Powell" wrote in message
...

"Arny Krueger" wrote

[snip]


We've got to remember that Morein tried to sue his
school in the Supreme Court of the United States in a
failed attempt to get a PhD degree. This is one
seriously and expensively bruised ego.

As one who has invested substantial funds in attorney
fees as a necessary expense of doing business I can
appreciate Robert's disposition on the matter. I have
respect for anyone who has been thought the financial
commitment of litigation and psychological hardships
they can cause.

I am surprised at the kindly thoughts, but I accept the intention.


While it is sport to dig Robert I don't believe it is a
reflection of any greater truth of moral or ethical quality.
Two metaphors to consider "A man who carries a cat by
the tail learns something he can learn in no other way
- Mark Twain", and Voltaire who said "I was never ruined
but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I
won one."


Like his RAO cohort in legal failure Scott Wheeler,
Morien's case got thrown out of court.

My case didn't get thrown out of court.
We won in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, which is the trial
level in Pennsylvania.
At the level of the Superior Court, the three judge panel split, with the
President Judge in our favor, and the other two judges voting to overturn
the decision of the trial court.
We did not succeed in obtaining a hearing at a higher level than that.
However, it should be noted that NO ONE in the United States has ever won a
case against a university based on theft of intellectual property, even at
the trial level.
The reason is that there is a precedent, dating back to the 13th century,
granting autonomy to universities in the area of academic administration. In
the Superior Court Brief, Drexel made the claim, which was accepted, that
they had no obligation to provide due process to a student.

As you note, Powell, this kind of experience changes a person. I would not
say, however, that it damaged me. It did change me.

It is quite a natural thing that since I enjoy embarassing Arny, he would
return the favor. I do not begrudge him the privilege. However, for the sake
of other students, or the cause that I briefly championed, it would be a
shame for the history of the trial to be distorted.

My graduate work was in the area of statistical systems theory. I have a
specialist's interest in clarifying the understanding of the public as to
the true meaning of MTBF. To quote Mark Twain again,

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I regret that one could be lead to believe that a disk drive could run 160
years, based upon the misinterpretation of a highly misleading term that has
been ruthlessly exploited by marketing mavens to rook the public. Only in
very highly simplified circumstances, where the physical processes are well
understood, can accurate long term predictions be made. As I mentioned, the
single factor of oil oxidation, leading to spindle motor failure, is enough
to complicate the statistics to the point that simple statistical
distributions cannot be applied. This leads to the famous "bathtub curve",
which has no formula, which simply means, after 120 years or so, you're
dead.

There are only a very few statistical distributions that are used for all
these circumstances: Poisson, binomial, Gaussian, and a handful more. These
can be used to predict failure rate for a handful of years, but nothing
more.