His assertsion about the number of wrongly convicted people are very wrong.I would say that around 80% are "users" whereas the rest have usually stumbled across it (this is very obviosu btw: there is not often a fine line). A lot of the defence is "it was a virus" so it is one of the first checks and has been the case in only one example as I recall.

We deal with all sorts of computers weekly & I have never identified CP on any of the machines that cross my desk (bar the odd image or 2 come across whilst browsing legitimate pron sites)

In terms of the origins: a lot of the mild abuse is "homebrew" with a small proportion of the worst images being homemade. The majority of extreme images are, from their context, commercially produced.

I cant say much about the children being forced or not (or comment on the argument of whether they are innocent or not) because I am biased due to my job and because it is wholly subjective (actually I deliberately emotionally detach from such thoughts to allow me to do my job fairly). And finally because I am involved purely in the technical side and have not met any abused persons :)

I am a bit worried to say any more: it really is grazing close to a line here (silly laws ;)). Im well on the right side of said line (i'll add) but....

EDIT: edited slightly after chatting to a colleague :)

Oh yeah, that sounds like fun. Clearly a great way to be nickle and dimed to death in every application and game.

My experience over the course of a couple of hardware startups doing more off-the-shelf approach is it would take you about $20-$35MM in total funding for a typical hardware startup doing something semi new/radical.

The hardware design itself can actually be relatively cheap. Packaging (custom tooling for cases, etc.) can easily cost you $20K-$300K (ie: as much as a big Angel round for some software startups). Manufacturing costs are usually a function of volume commitments and timing. So, you are going to be incented to commit to larger manufacturing runs than you are comfortable with to keep the per-unit cost low. Inevitably, after you do this you find there is some trivial but important item you missed, so you end up with re-work costs, or if you're very unlucky a lot of scrapped inventory.

To answer your Tablet PC question, my guess is that you're looking at $10M. There is not a lot of invention there. You'd pull together a lot of off-the-shelf components into a new form factor. Most of your early costs would be sucked up by the design and tooling of the casing and overall industrial design. I'd venture that you'd be $500K into it just for ID and an ME to layout the (presumably) injection molding designs for the case and first mold. Budget another $150K ish for UL and FCC certs (your outsourced factory can help you with a lot of this process). Then you're likely to go through probably $250K in the initial hardware designs and single-unit prototypes. You'll generally need or want 1 prototype for each developer (probably 5-8 in this case), plus another 6-12 for QA, and another dozen or so for demos and for employees to carry around and just "use" out in the wild. If you're making a tablet with an $800 price point, your production BOM is going to be around $200, and total manufacturing costs around $350ish, but your first prototypes will cost you $1000ish/ea at first because a lot of it will be work done by hand, etc.

So, thinking purely off the top of my head, you'd probably take a $1M angel round, a $4M A round and a $5M B round. Since this is a semi-proven CE device and not something radically new, you just need to build it and get it out there, not convince the world why they need it.

In terms of viewing images it is quite hard. Partly I manage it due to my personality (empathy troubles etc. which is ideal for disconnecting). Mostly though it is by multi threading: I program & pen test for the company I work at so I occupy my mind with programming/hacking problems for later whilst leaving part of me on neutral to process cases. And then just through sheer will power :)

At first it was difficult to do but I find it easier and easier to function perfectly normally (i.e. thoroughly and effectively do an investigation) whilst not fully connecting with the content :)

(Also we use hash analysis to cut down the amount of actual content we view - standard practice).

If you mean in terms of not feeling angry at suspects etc. - that is difficult but I find ways to channel my dislike outside of work (kickboxing, occasionally alcohol, arguing with my GF):) and carefully control it when in the office. Again - practice makes that easier.

Not for everyone but I (and I hesitate to use this word because of the context) enjoy it.

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"AI Google Killer": The kiss of death and a box of poisoned chocolates.

I get the impression that tech journalists purposely overhype new ideas just so 6 months later they can trash the very thing they overhyped for not living up to its expectations. Job security for tech journalists.