The hidden lockouts containing GPS coordinates of competitors' repair facilities should be more than enough to establish criminal intent (in my armchair non-lawyer opinion).
Except that this isn't really a story about poorly written software; it's a story about corrupt management. Further, if we look at Boeing's recent issues with the 737Max, it's the same thing. In both of these cases, the bad software was almost certainly ordered to be written by management acting fraudulently for profit. The one error that has been discussed in the article was a stupid mistake, quite possibly due to the logic conditions being made overly complicated in order to enable the fraud, but the recurrent theme of all of the real underlying issues found was intentional design malfeasance, not incompetence.
Some of the problems here might have been logic problems by inept coders; however, the underlying theme of this scandal is corrupt management. Even the erroneous code was an explicit piece of fraud that almost certainly was done under order by someone in the management chain.
Worldwide colonialism wasn't exactly a "gift", but I must admit it has been advantageous to me, personally, for English to be as relatively universal as it has become as a result. ;-)
Unfortunately, having watched so many mass-input rating systems fail by being gamed, I suspect that this strategy might only really work well if the reinforcement model was built and maintained independently for each user...which seems like an approach that could be very effective but which would be more difficult and likely costly to scale.
Not a tiny purchase, but small compared to things like houses and cars, is Lasik. Giving myself sharp distance vision and eliminating the need to wear glasses was simply the best money that I've ever spent on improving my life.
This joke must have been written by a journalist who's never been to Microsoft and doesn't bother to fact check their work, since the Microsoft campus is in Redmond and the tallest buildings there are only six stories high.