Slashdot Mirror

http://browsers.about.com/od/fire3/ss/firefoxdictmac.htm

Or not...as the case may be here in the U.S.

According to this web site PT standards haven't gone up at all in recent history since those are about the same (roughly) as when I was in the military in the early 90s. I was in the Air Force, but trained with all services during tech school so I was quite familiar with Army standards of the time. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/army/a/afpt.htm

For soldiers 22-26 it's 40 push ups (in 2 minutes), 50 sit ups (in 2 minutes) and 16:36 time for the 2 mile run. Those values only get easier for older soldiers. If you think "most slashdotters" wouldn't make it in the door, I think you're sadly mistaken. Those are particularly easy values for anyone remotely fit to attain, and not particularly difficult for many people who aren't that fit. Obviously there is a contingent of folks who are sadly out of shape, for whatever reason, that it would be difficult for but it's far from "most" even in the slashdot community, I'd guess.

Or maybe he knew exacly what it meant. Champ - The field or ground of a field. It ran itself into the ground.

Clark had a conversation with Condoleezza Rice. She told him that the war in Kosovo would have never taken place under a Bush administration, as they adhered more to realpolitik.

Chord: To work well, markets need to strike a balance, the goal being perfect competition. When there is no competition -- a monopoly -- then the only way to balance it is to create a monopsony.

A common theoretical implication is that the price of the good is pushed down near the cost of production. The price is not predicted to go to zero because if it went below where the suppliers are willing to produce, they won't produce.

Are you sure about Ben Franklin? He turned down a patent on his stove, to put it in the public domain.

I'm pretty sure it was 40 when I enlisted, but I don't remember. I was a programmer so I was surrounded by people who scored in the 99th percentile anyway (just ask them). One of my best friends always hung out with people in Security Forces because "they don't all think they are better than everyone else." Seems the common computer nerd tries to make up for his lack of physical prowess by overestimating the value of uninteresting knowledge.

When I was in the Air Force people always used to be surprised when someone would do something stupid; they thought that since you had to score in the 40th percentile in the ASVAB test to get in the Air Force rather than the 30th as in the Navy, the people should be smarter.

You sure you weren't in the Coast Guard, they require 40. The Air Force 36 and the Navy 35. ;-) http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/genjoin/a/asvabminimum.htm

I would like to point out, that in America when cable was first offered to the public, the ONLY purpose of buying it was so that you can watch TV WITHOUT commercial interruption. Else, it was the typical bunny ears with tinfoil wrapped around them, watching General Hospital on ABC or was it CBS, and have to watch a commercial every five minutes or so.

Cable was originally created so that television signals could be re-transmitted to people who could not receive the signals because of blocking mountains. The continued right of cable providers to retransmit television signals, with appropriate compulsory licenses, is protected under 17 U.S.C. Sec. 111.

Probably a better explaination than i could muster ;) http://stocks.about.com/od/advancedtrading/a/OptionBa022705.htm

I know a lot of people who use Google as their primary search engine, I know lots of people who use Yahoo for searching and mail, I even know people who prefer to use Ask.

I use Google as my primary search engine, but it's not the only one. For some searches I go to About.com first now. What's ironic is that that's because of Google, some searches I did Google led me to About.com, an About.com page was one of if not Google's first result. And when Google fails to provide me with what I'm looking for I use either Teoma, now Ask.com, or Mooter, they will return what I look for if Google doesn't.

I however use Yahoo! mail, but if MS acquires it I will switch. I am also a member of some Yahoo! groups I'll leave as well.

When you consider private sector salaries, and compare with the apparent prestige and "importance" of being a Congressperson, Senators and Representatives don't get paid all that much (just $169,300 for 2008). If you lower their salary, you'll attract the following kinds of people to Congress: a) incredibly stupid people who can't hold a decent job (hmmm... no, that joke's too easy), and b) independently-wealthy people who won't care about the low salary, and likely have in mind the interests of similarly-rich people. Your average American who "just wants to make a difference" won't be able to afford being in Congress.

I don't know that increasing the salary would be a great choice, either, but it would likely attract many of the great minds who currently do much better for themselves working in the private sector. That's something, at least.

1. Yes, you are,
2. No, you're not, and/or
3. You are indeterminate
Mork.
http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_schrodingererwin.htm
RR

Please explain this. Most countries?

I doubt most of these have strict employment laws.

http://geography.about.com/od/countryinformation/a/capitals.htm

qz

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:59:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds
To: Kernel Mailing List
Subject: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Ok,
there's no way to do this gracefully, so I won't even try. I'm going to
just hunker down for some really impressive extended flaming, and my
asbestos underwear is firmly in place, and extremely uncomfortable.

I want to make it clear that DRM is perfectly ok with Linux!

There, I've said it. I'm out of the closet.

Linky linky.

Linus actively added this crap to the kernel back in 2.6.12!
Linky linky.

Since open source is big business these days (at least on servers) they realise they could lose a big market out there.

Their game plan is to pull an Embrace Extend on Open Source... and there is no doubt that some intend it to be an Embrace Extend and Extinguish.
Linky linky site:trustedcomputinggroup.org+"open+source"

With the new DRM hardware they can make all the DRM software completely Open Source, and the DRM doesn't care that the source is available. With the new DRM hardware they can largely make the source code useless, because because the source will no longer work if you attempt to modify and recompile it.

the Linux market would just run to AMD.

As I said, AMD is no knight in shining armor, they are not riding to your rescue. AMD has signed on with the army of evil. AMD was one of the FOUNDING MEMBERS of the Trusted Comptuing Group.
Don't miss this linky linky!

Seriously.... not NOT skip that last linky! It is AMD's own presentation on their intent to shove this crap down all our throats. The planned timeline has slipped, primarily with Microsoft's failure to roll out the intended support in Vista, but there is no indication that any of the inent has been fundamentally abandoned.

Page 2 AMD is "embracing TCG concepts of attestation and trusted computing"... where attestation means your computer spying on you and attesting that spy report to other people, and where trusted computing means other people Trust your computer will enforce DRM against you. And the AMD plan also "fully supports Microsoft's NGSCB needs", where NagSCaB is Microsoft's DRM enforcement vendor lock-in & owner lock-out security system.
Page 4 "in spite of attacks" mostly means "attacks" by the owner, and "unauthorized disclosure" explicitly includes disclosure of the owner's own data to himself.
Page 7 "sealing" "secure" "secure" "secure" "secure" and "attestation" are all explicitly against the owner, and "isolated" is also pretty well designed and intended anti-owner as well.

Seriously, do NOT underestimate the enemy and the threat here. Intel was blindsided by the public reaction against CPU serial numbers with their original plan. And they have learned from that Public Relations disaster. They have gotten together with IBM and HP and AMD and Microsoft and every major chip maker and every major motherboard maker and every major BIOS provider and over 200 companies covering essentially the entire computer industry redesigning the system and coming up with a viable deployment plan and preparing major public relations and media and spin control preparation and behind the scenes influence manipulating various governments. The spending

In the West, we find censorship abhorent, a crime against liberty. Capitulation simply to avoid controversy is the very antithesis of free exchange of ideas. This is essentially giving in to a mobocracy kind of situation, where a militant group successfully bullies someone into their way of thinking.

But this capitulation, specifically to offended Muslims, is becoming routine. Borders and Waldenbooks take magazines off their shelves if they contain articles that might upset some Muslims. YouTube removes videos that discuss Islam if Muslims complain. What we see and know, what we are allowed to discuss, is already in part determined by these mobs.

So should I just assume all other forms of censorship in the United States is Christian in origin? What about the recent attack by the Christian right on the Harry Potter novels?

http://atheism.about.com/od/harrypotter/a/censorship.htm

I find it hard to believe that there is so much xenophobia with Muslims. This fear that they will somehow single-handedly erode away our rights and freedoms in the near future is completely nonsensical. What about the Christian Right that is eroding our rights this very second? Why is everyone paying so much attention to the Muslims? All you are doing is distracting yourself from the real problem in this country.

I admit that I was ignorant enough to think we were off the gold standard during the Great Depression

We were on it then but Nixon took the US off the gold standard. However according to this article President Franklin D. Roosevelt effectively took the US off the Gold Standard by making it illegal to own gold, except for jewelery.

While that may be the case, the same can be said for so-called "green" cars. This can be found in the following article: The History of Electric Vehicles

The difference between what Shell tried in the past and this time around is something called INNOVATION; which is something that has been severely hindered by ass-backwards patent system in the US. Not to mention the litigation-happy society some of us live in.

From TFA:

"It works for any car whose tank can be opened without a key, and whose contours and dimensions have been recorded to avoid scratching."

Guess again.

Does the "Great Depression" ring a bell? You know, the depression that happened after the Federal Reserve had been inflating the money like crazy throughout the 1920s?

Actually he said -

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/health-freedom/
I also opposed the Homeland Security Bill, H.R. 5005, which, in section 304, authorizes the forced vaccination of American citizens against small pox. The government should never have the power to require immunizations or vaccinations.

I'm not really sure I disagree with him to be honest. I don't like the idea of forced vaccination. More importantly, I don't think it would work. If people don't believe a vaccination is safe they'll find some way to avoid it. Personally I'd take the vaccination if some terrorist group weaponized it, but the pros and cons of doing so seem to be sufficiently well balance that I don't agree with forcing other people to do do.

E.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine#Post-eradication_vaccination
The vaccine consists of the virus which causes the related, yet far milder, cowpox disease; this virus is appropriately named vaccinia, from the Latin vaca which means cow. This vaccine has functional viruses in it which improves its effectiveness but, unfortunately, causes serious complications for people with impaired immune systems (for example chemotherapy and AIDS patients, and people with eczema) and is not yet considered safe for pregnant women. A woman planning on conceiving within one month should not receive the smallpox immunization until after the pregnancy. In the event of an outbreak the woman should delay pregnancy if possible. A small, yet significant, percentage of healthy individuals also suffer adverse side-effects which, in rare cases, include permanent neurological damage. Vaccines that only contain attenuated vaccinia viruses (an attenuated virus is one in which the pathogenicity has been decreased through serial passage) have been proposed but some researchers have questioned the possible effectiveness of such a vaccine. Others point out that mass vaccinations would probably not be needed to counter a bioterrorist attack if many millions of doses of the current (possibly improved) vaccine could be delivered to victims within several days of exposure. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, "vaccination within 3 days of exposure will prevent or significantly lessen the severity of smallpox symptoms in the vast majority of people. Vaccination 4 to 7 days after exposure likely offers some protection from disease or may modify the severity of disease." This, along with vaccinations of so-called first-responders, is the current plan of action being devised by the United States Department of Homeland Security and FEMA in the United States.

And if you look at Gulf War I when soldiers were given masses of vaccinations, some of them developed Gulf War Syndrome. Now as far as I know the link between the two things is not proven, but I'd be very wary of a rushed max vaccination program in response to terrorist attacks. This MD certainly believes in a link -

http://thyroid.about.com/library/news/blsmallpoxthyroid.htm

Can they do this against Google? From a customer stand-point I'm not sure. I'm not just going to use Microsoft Search(tm) over Google so long as Google remains free and provides decent results. So Microsoft can't really win there. But they can steal ad revenue from Google by making their business/web-ads side more appealing to businesses. Get that, control the ad market and you'll be able to embrace and extend Google...

However to beat Google in ads a competitor has to deliver more eyeballs. Many people use Google because it's clean and returns relevant search results. MS may have a viable competitor with Live.com but until Google no longer provides decent results I won't switch and I don't think too many others will either. Even when Google doesn't return good results though I still won't use Live, as it is now when Google doesn't return what I'm looking for I use Teoma (now Ask.com), Mooter, or About.com. Once in a while I use Alta Vista.

I found this page which says, 'By virtue of this statute, the Government may be held liable to the patent owner for payment of the "reasonable and entire compensation" for its unauthorized use of the patent. Unlike a private party, however, the Government cannot commit the tort of "patent infringement." Governmental use of a patented invention is viewed as an eminent domain taking of a license under the patent and not as a tort.'

So they don't take ownership of the patent but instead a license for the patent, which isn't really the same thing. However, this seems to solve the "freeing up patents vital to society" issue since an eminent domain license lets the government do the same stuff as would an eminent domain patent.

Then, this page claims that 'Eminent domain was used in 1948 to gain access to patented processes when that use of governmental power was established through the U.S. judicial code [3]. But it was a power seldom exercised, partly because of the weight of the free enterprise tradition that honored patents and innovation in U.S. commerce. In the tradition of hard bargaining, the power has been held in reserve, as a kind of ultimate weapon, while a favorable deal was cut between the patent holder and governmental authorities.'

That seems to address your other points. I don't know the precise method the government used to decide the compensation, but I was only giving some possible examples anyway, and it appears they must have *some* method since it's been done in the past. It also shows you're right about the risk to free enterprise -- however, since eminent domain is pretty much a "last resort" tactic, I don't think most businesses worry about that! And in the end it's much safer to cut a deal than have the value decided arbitrarily by a judge.

Seriously, what bullshit.

Look 25 years into the past. That means 1982. Then look at any "25 years from now" articles from 1982. What's your guess as to their accuracy?

Cell phones? In 1982, we had the "B-Net" here in Germany. It was analog, had about 20,000 users and 75 channels. The devices were huge, very few people carried them around.

Computers? The original IBM PC had just been released (August, 1981). In case you don't remember, it had a 4.77 MHz CPU and 16 or 64 KB of RAM (extendible to the legendary 640 KB). It also had no hard drive. It did come with floppy drives, though - 5 1/4".

Games? I'm too lazy to google up all the details, but Akalabeth, the predecessor of Ultima, was released in 1979.

Internet? Well, TCP/IP was developed in 1982. Two years later, the Internet had about 1000 hosts. Anyone claiming in 1982 that this fragile university-connection thing would have billions of users in 2008 would've been laughed at. BBS was what networking was about, and FidoNet (started in 1983) appeared as a more likely candidate for an international network for the masses into the 90s.

So in other words, any "what's the world going to be like in 25 years" is, to put it bluntly, bullshit pulled out of someone's ass. 25 years from now, we'll look at it and shake our hads in sad admiration of the guy who was daft enough to publish something so obviously wrong and nonsensical.

Here are a few ideas...
http://www.shelfordfeast.co.uk/guineapig.html
http://www.marxmail.org/archives/december98/guinea_pig.htm
http://gosouthamerica.about.com/od/cuisine/a/cuy.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookingdiva/62203219/
http://www.exotickitchen.com/recipes/recipes5.htm
Just think of them as big squirrels without the fluffy tails ;-)

Another chance at a free taco! Whoo hoo!

Ed Snider owns the Spectrum. But he's going to tear it down.

"And if anything goes wrong, the guy AND the game makers will get sued for millions."

Not necessarily. In the U.S., there are what's called "Good Samaritan" laws. To wit:

"Any person who, in good faith, renders emergency medical care or assistance to an injured person at the scene of an accident or other emergency without the expectation of receiving or intending to receive compensation from such injured person for such service, shall not be liable in civil damages for any act or omission, not constituting gross negligence, in the course of such care or assistance."

Emphasis mine. A little digging on the web shows that North Carolina, where this occured, pass a Good Samaritan law in 1975 providing immunity to would be rescuers. In short, Good Samaritan laws give the rescuer a "get out of jail free" card.

IANAL, so check your state. I hate to hear others state that "they don't want to get involved as they may get sued." Knowing the above, that's a cop-out. Don't be afraid to help if you think you can.

More information:
About dot com
State by state listing

I didn't say red meat makes you FULL. I said that the protein balance found in red meat (and not adequately substitutable with anything else) keeps your *long-term* appetite under control -- and the effect there is that you need *fewer* carbs to achieve that final feeling of satsifaction.

In general, vegetarians tend to be thinner than the rest of the population. I've never noticed anyone who ate red meat being any thinner than the people I know who don't.

One potato will do instead of two, and so on.

Never could eat two potatoes in one sitting anyways, and can usually only finish one if it's small. As I said before, people are different.

(BTW being low on B-complex vitamins will make you crave wheat products.)

I'm not low on B vitamins. And I don't eat wheat products obsessively, I have them as part of normal-sized meals. It's just that if I have a meal without any wheat products then I'm usually hungry afterwards.

And you are right, it's perfectly possible to be pretty chunky and still be healthy; lots of farmers and eskimos will agree with you. But if your weight is affecting your lifestyle (including negative impacts on health, such as joint problems or diabetes), ie. preventing you from activities you could do when you were thinner, you are carrying too much, and that threshold can be 5 pounds or 100 pounds (which is about the max before it WILL negatively impact your life).

Diabetes (type II) isn't caused by obesity, it correlates with obesity. Only a tiny percentage of obese people have diabetes. Type II diabetes is genetic, so if you have a lot of family members with it then you will likely get it, whether you're fat or thin. And if you want to bring up fat children with Type II, remember that it was only recently that anyone even tested children for Type II (and you can go for years with diabetes without knowing, ask anyone with it). So we haven't gone from 0 to whatever the number is now, we've gone from unknown to known. 5 extra pounds is not going to impact your health. 5 pounds is nothing. As for the high end, some people are just built chunky and can't get skinny in any healthy way. I have a friend who has always been fat (about 300lds now), and the only time she wasn't was when she was bulimic. She's tried a lot of different diets and changes (besides bulimia), at one point she was vegetarian, and now she's trying high protein, low carb. Her weight doesn't go down with reasonably healthy diets (from whatever philosophy), it only goes down with starvation, and that's not healthy. People should focus more on being healthy instead of what they weigh. Sure, many people who eat healthy and exercise will be at a good weight, but some won't, and we shouldn't push them to starve themselves because their bodies don't react like other people's.

Veggies are very poor weight-control food, as you need to eat a lot more calories worth of veggies to get the same net level of nutrients that you do from a more-concentrated food. Lack or imbalance of nutrients creates cravings (which is why in general you should listen to your cravings, not fight them).

You've got that confused. Veggies are very low in calories (by volume, compared to other foods) and have more nutrients than just about anything. Here's the nutrition facts for spinach. It only has 7 calories per serving, less than a gram of fat, 0 cholesterol (of course), and a whole list of nutrients, from calcium and potassium to things that I don't even know what they are. Now look at the nutrition facts of beef (according to the meat man, chosen because he's not likely to be biased against meat). The cut with the lowest amount of calories is still at 150, has 7 grams of fat, 70 micrograms of cholesterol, and... meatman doesn't list any nutrients besides iron and

As much as I don't admonish the subject line (I'm biased for women of any nationality) the OP was correct, if not a bit rude, to state that American's did not invent these things.

For example, Germans are greatly responsible for inventing the automobile, not the US or the UK. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcar.htm

America's contribution was mostly in assembly and manufacture (sounds like US-China today....something to consider from a historical perspective) as Henry Ford was so well recognized for.

The first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. She would grind up scabs taken from a person infected with smallpox into a powder, and then blow it into the nostrils of a non-immune person. By the 1700's, this method of variolation was common practice in China, India, and Turkey. In the late 1700's European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported "devastating" results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox fatalities by 10-fold. The History of Smallpox

It is a bit of a strtch to call the smallpox vaccine an "invention."

Jenner simply observed that those who survived the less dangerous cowpox were immune to smallpox. His test subject was an eight year old boy. The ethics and methodology of his experiment were questionable even in 1796.

Throughout the nineteenth century you could have a perfectly rational fear of vaccination.

There was no mature germ theory of disease before the 1860s. Late Germ Theory of DiseaseThere was no federal regulation of vaccination before 1902:

The Biologics Control Act was passed in the United States on July 1, 1902 after two incidents involving the deaths of children caused by contaminated vaccines. The first involved The horse named Jim whose tetanus contaminated serum was used to produce a diphtheria antitoxin which caused the deaths of thirteen children in St. Louis, Missouri. The second involved contaminated smallpox vaccine which killed nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Both incidents were attributed to failure of proper procedures and testing by local officials. Biologics Control Act

I believe this is the cookie story you are thinking of.

Thanks.

Or listen to this guy:
http://german.about.com/library/media/sound/words_a.mp3
Sounds like Por-sha to me.

Then again, I'm not a linguist, and there maybe a sound that my untrained ears doesn't detect. (Quite likely as I have some hearing damage from the numerous ear infections as a kid). A

It is properly pronounced with the 'e'.

When in doubt, watch a commercial for the product. The manufacturer rarely pronounces their own product's name incorrectly.

Actually, the US dollar is plummeting because of a very costly military expense. To pay for it, the US Treasury Department has been pumping out tons and tons of US dollars.

Check the budget stats:
http://useconomy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=useconomy&cdn=newsissues&tm=18&gps=156_62_1036_445&f=00&tt=11&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/summarytables.html

I believe this is the cookie story you are thinking of.

Some day, I hope that democracy starts working again...let's see if this is a start?

I'd be surprised. The complaints we have about democracy today are pretty much the same ones Aristotle had 2500 years ago.

In any case, they're completely US again. Not that that's something to brag about considering how the US auto industry is going currently.

GM needs to come out with some crazy stuff like this soon because they're failing in their core products.

I got old (fat) PSP for Christmas so I spent some time modding it out and here's what I've found.

4gb memory sticks can be found for $60 online and are a great investment.

You can use this program to backup your UMD disks and then compress them, put them on the memory stick, and tada.

iR Shell is awesome, it provides a the ability to control IR devices, nice skinnable shell, good file browser, lets you switch out of games (think alt-tab), play MP3s while you're playing a game and mute game music, toggle CPU speed, do adhoc wifi transfers between PSPs, take screenshots and much more, you can find a larger list of features (and the un-official forum) here.

PSP Vault has a very nice downloads section, tons of guides and very active forums.
Psp-homebrew has a great list of homebrew you can sort by firmware version. compatibility
QJ.net is another good resource.

PSP Radio lets you stream internet radio on your PSP.

There are NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo, N64, Atari 2600, C64 and probably others.

Wifisniffer is a great probably that does just what it says.

PSP Weather is another good one.

PSP HTTPD lets you use your psp as a webserver.

Portable VNC lets you control your PC with your PSP and there is software that will let you use your PSP as your gamepad for your PC.

PSP XTI is a TI-92 (Graphing calculator) emulator for the PSP. GPS is soon coming to the PSP (USA only), it will be available as a UMD but no release date or price has been set.

There are many others, just browse the file collections and forums.

If you have a PSP with the factory firmware and wish to downgrade it can be an annoying process, it depends on what version firmware you're running.
This forum post as has the information you need.

Used PSPs can be had for less than $100 in stores near me, including a 1gb pro-duo stick, I think I've squeezed $100 worth of features out of it.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes

Commands of the grope family search the input files (standard input default) for lines matching a pattern. Some of the lines matching this pattern will be sent to standard output. Others will not. Grope patterns are limited expressions in the style of mumps(1); it uses a compact nondeterministic n-depth multidimensional negative feedback oracle/bag-automata algorithm with mudflaps, foam dice, and dimples. Egrope works only in Europe. Fgrope uses FM to locate strings. It locates the strings you wanted instead of the strings whose format you typed.

http://linux.about.com/od/funnymanpages/a/funman_grope.htm

This idea is great. Here are some more:

1. I think a general copyright of 14 years is the optimum from the time of publication. This study previously appeared on slashdot.
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

2. Solve the problem of people using copyright to prevent reproduction especially in small independent films.
If companies use copyright to deny reproduction at any price or at a price that is so high its absurd, enable people to pay some fixed fee and ignore the wishes of the copyright holder. Copyright shouldn't be a tool to prevent reproduction just a tool to make some money from artistic creativity.

3. If companies abuse the position by engaging in fraud or anti trust behavior to manipulate prices they lose their copyright.
http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/PrRel/prfeb192004.htm
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-cd-settlement.htm

4. Expand fair use. If I want to use a small portion of a book eg 1000 words from a 50,000 word book its ok even if its for profit. I just can't reproduce lots of 1000 word bit to reproduce the book. If its educational I get to use it unless it literally causes major loss to the company. Eg in a classroom I can make 200 copies of a newspaper article for all the students. I just can't do that for a whole textbook. But I can use it for a figure from a textbook.

5. No automatic copyright for photos. There has to be some artistic quality to them.

6. In the U.S., buildings built on or after December 1, 1990 are also eligible for copyright. This is pathetic. Given that creativity was not stifled beforehand this is totally unnecessary. No copyright on buildings.

7. No frivolous copyright either like on restaurants. Yes someone was sued and lost because one restaurant was too similar to another.

8. No copyright on 'happy birthday'. If you sing happy birthday in a restaurant you gotta pay a fee to the so called rights holder. The movie 'The Corporation' claims that Warner/Chappell charge up to US$10,000 for the song to appear in a film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You

Rule of thumb... Isn't that the rule that says a man can beat his wife with a stick as long as it's no thicker than his thumb?

No

With regard to respect for the law, I'd argue forty years ago would be "more civilized times," but that is just my perspective.

Meucci had a voice link from his workshop to his mother year's before Bell's "patent". He'd been suing Bell for years when he ran out of money/died. It's pretty well established that Bell stole his patents. I think If you read the page linked to in the relevant foot note, you will see it's not as cut and dried as you selectively quoted. And who is Tomas Farley anyway? I can't see anything in Wikipedia quoting him as an expert on anything.

What we do know is that Meucci's sample hardware submitted to the Patent Office was "mislaid", and that one of Bell's close business associates worked at the Patent Office. Coincidence maybe, but worth investigating deeper than pulling a random quote from Wikipedia by an unknown source.