Caught out by intentional mistakes

In a recent conversation with Prof. Sudhanshu Shekhar Jamuar, a DLP speaker for IEEE Circuits and System Society 2008/9, he said he sometimes inject mistakes into his lecture to determine if his students are following and who are the better students. I asked if there is any chance that students may end up learning the wrong thing and Prof. Jamuar said no as he will not let the mistakes continue too far.

It would be hilarious if an intentional mistake is allowed to continue beyond its intented purpose. An example of this is claim 9 of US patent Pub. No. 20040161257. An excerpt of the claim is as follows. This patent is listed as one of the crazy patent at freepatentsonline.

I think most inventors will read what their patent attorney prepares for them very carefully. It took me more than a year to draft and review revisions with the patent attorney for my very first patent. However, a recent patent filing had a dateline and the time between the first draft to filing was only a few weeks. I was so tired mentally when I received the final writeup (having gone through a few revisions over a few nights) that I virtually skim through the final document prior to filing! Considering the above example, I don't think I will ever skim any patent document again!

High pressure washer loosen ...

It seems that domestic high pressure washer are these days as common as lawnmower. It is so easy to blast dirt and grime on all kind of surfaces with one of these high pressure washer as compared to brushing with elbow grease. When we redeemed a unit from points from our credit card our neighbour was telling us that a friend of his was using one of these washer to clean dirt and grime along mortar joints and that the pressure was so great that it removed grouting and cement along these joints. Some much so that he now have loose tiles!