Slashdot Mirror

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21654883/The-Golden-Book-of-Chemistry-Experiments for a link to the book.

Most of what I learned about chemistry came from an old science kit from my dad as well as a book that he had as a child growing up (with lots of physical experiments as well) I also got a full dissection kit from my grandfather when I was eight.

I was also learning how to cook starting when I was seven, and made an absolutely horrid cake (okay sweetie, you pick the ingredients, and lets see how it works!) amazingly, it was edible...

Talking about removing rulers from science kits seems like a slippery slope to me, my science kit had razors, beakers, a tealight bunsen burner, needles and tweezers.

Put a label on it and say adult supervision required, and trust the adult to keep the kids from whacking eachother over the head with sticks. A bratty kid who pokes another kid bad enough to seriously injure them will find something outside the science kit to do the same thing, taking things out of the science kit wont do a bit of good.

go forth and explore.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21654883/The-Golden-Book-of-Chemistry-Experiments

I would definitely let my kids do this.

Found it readily readable/downloadable here.

Ah, you're one of those guys who likes to tell other people to do research but don't want to bother to do it yourself.

From this article, from March of this year:

Iran is poised to begin producing nuclear weapons after its uranium program expansion in 2009, even though it has had problems with thousands of its centrifuges, according to a newly released CIA report.

"Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so," the annual report to Congress states.

The CIA report is the latest official study expressing concern over Iran's continuing nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency on March 3 issued a report warning that continuing nuclear activities in violation of U.N. resolutions raise "concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile."

On Iran, the report says that it is "keeping open" its options for building nuclear arms, "though we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons."

Last year, Iran disclosed it is building a second gas-centrifuge plant near the city of Qom that will house an estimated 3,000 machines. U.S. officials have said the Qom facility, which was discovered in 2007, is a clear sign Iran's nuclear program is geared toward producing weapons, because the facility is too small for nonmilitary uranium enrichment.

On missiles, the report said Iran is building more short- and medium-range ballistic missiles and stated that "producing more capable medium-range ballistic missiles remains one of its highest priorities."

The report also said that Iran has the capability of producing both chemical and biological weapons, and Tehran continued to seek dual-use technology for its bioweapons program.

Clearly nuclear fits the "dual-use" goal perfectly.

Here's the complete CIA report:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29296633/CIA-Report-WMD-Proliferation-721-Apr10

What's being announced here is a non-final office action in an ex parte reexamination. Basically, the EFF submitted some prior art that presented a 'substantial new question' of patentability and asked the Patent Office to review it. From there, the Patent Office and the patent owner hash things out; the prior art submitter's role is finished. (Prior art submitters can take a more hands-on role via inter partes reexamination, but that's more expensive and time consuming than ex parte reexam).

Reexamination cases are a little tricky to look up because you have to find the control number for the case. The control number in this case is 90/009637, which you can plug into Public PAIR. Here is the non-final office action that is the subject of the post, since you can't link directly to documents in PAIR.

The patent owner will have an opportunity to respond to this non-final office action. If the examiner is satisfied, then that's that. More likely the examiner will not accept the arguments or will have discovered new ones. Typically there are one or two non-final actions and then a final action. After that, the patent owner can still appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. From the time of appeal to a decision is, at median, a couple of years. From there the patent owner could still appeal to the Federal Circuit.

So, while this is a preliminary finding, it is very far from definitive.

Capita might be ripping off the good people of Birmingham

Crapita never do anything without ripping off good people. Here in Coventry, they've installed voice stress analysis software to attempt to detect people lying when they claim benefits... of course the fact that VSA is essentially snake oil hasn't stopped them spending millions on the piece of software this paper was written about. Well worth reading if you want to know the kind of junk our councils spend our hard earned cash on.

Oh, look, a Wordpress blog. Try this:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/models/ngm/may04/crc0304c.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/1694562/Environmental-Protection-Agency-eberhardt

Drop the worshipping finally; it will only bring trouble down the line / your deamons had similar faithfull at the beginning who pushed them too much.

Research in child development clearly shows the most important factor in the well-adjustment in a child is the presence of attentive adult influence. In a situation where older (adult and nearly adult) children are the primary care providers and role models for young (infant and preschool) children, it is very possible that the younger children would receive the attention and encouragement needed to grow up as a well-adjusted adult. Thus, it is not necessarily factual that these parents are providing a deficient environment for their children- they may have found an alternative support structure for their family. However, I do not know of any studies examining the well-adjustedness of children from such large families (the vast majority study two-parent heterosexual one to three children families compared with one-parent one-to-three children families). Citations: Perry V Schwarzenegger (9th Cir. 2010) Findings of Fact 69 through 73, and discussion (ruling pages 94-96, or pages 97-99 at http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-August-2010)

"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

And what if Hawking figured out the complete theory just after he lost the capacity for communication with the rest of the world. Would God notice?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19550880/GUT-The-Grand-Unified-Theory-A-oneact-play-with-seven-blackouts

The state of the law is currently that you can't copyright an api so anyone is free to reimplement the methods in any class library as long as the reimplementation don't include any code from the original implementation.

That's music to my ears.

This is most likely the reason that Sun is suing for patents, and not copyright. Google have not made any copy of code owed by sun.

Are you sure? I hear that Sun is suing for copyright, too. (A source).

Here is the original report: Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults

Such large sample sizes scare me. When you've got 100,000 data points, almost anything seems statistically significant.

Having a look at the abstract of the page "Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults", I am not sure about some of this... After reading that, I got more interested in it and just got the original article, though that doesn't help much, it's missing a lot of summary data, none the less...

• The results were via questionnaire, my guess is that people who believe they are more healthy, would underestimate the amount they sit, and people who don't, might overestimate it.
• 50% to 73% of the people who answered these questionnaires were "Retired/homemaker" with the mean age being 63.6 (standard deviation, 6) for me, and 61.9 (standard deviation, 6.5) for women. This was when they enrolled in the study in 1992, making them on average 77.6 for men, and 75.9 for women. For comparison look at the life expectancy data for people born in those years, this puts them firmly in the timespan where they were expected to die.
• Looking at the mean ages, there is a correlation between hours sat per day, and mean age. So those who are apart of the group who sits more, are also those who are oldest.
• On the mens side 52% to 57% are former smokers. On the womens side 48% to 60% never smoked, which might be correct for that generation but I am uncertain. Though they have corrected for this, I wonder how they corrected, and if that correction is legitimate.
• There appears to be an abnormally large amount of people who have NEVER consumed alcohol for women that's 44% to 47%, and for me that's 31% to 32%. This seems amazing of this sample, since I don't drink, and everyone points out how weird it is.
• This sample group was obtained from participants in the American Cancer Society's CPS-II Nutrition Cohort, as such the sample might over represent people worried about cancer and similar illnesses because they have higher instances of it in their family. They had people report their personal history to control for some of these things, but not their family history.

Additionally I would really need to get into their statistical method more, and get their original data, as it looks like there could be many more problems.

I would take this study, with a fuck load of salt.

Apparently the House passed it. The idiots there most likely did not read it. I wonder what happens when the president sees it. http://www.scribd.com/H-R-1586/d/35718607#fullscreen:on

SEC was explicitly alarmed by H. Markopolos on November 7th, 2005, that the world’s largest hedge fund is a fraud. The original 19 pages paper can for example be seen here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9189285/Markopolos-Madoff-Complaint

This paper tells straight that Bernie Madoff was committing fraud. Crowd sourcing would never have helped here as SEC was just refused to accept the evident proof of Madoff's wrongdoing.

I heard the first time about this paper in a talk given by Prof. Paul Embrecht. His very interesting talk notes can be found here: http://www.actuaries.org/ASTIN/Colloquia/Helsinki/Presentations/Embrechts.pdf

Here's the full proposal of the deal. Cringley called it correctly; Google has found a cake-and-eat-it-too compromise: a parallel internet. One internet layer will run more or less openly, with data type prioritization allowed, but no sender prioritization. The other layer can be sender prioritized.

Actually, it's not a bad compromise. The immediate problem I see is how does one keep the Commercial Channel from taking bandwidth away from the Open Channel, so consumers are forced to buy the Commercial Channel just to get decent throughput? If it works like public television does now, with no diminution of the channel capacity or quality, then that would work just fine, I think.

4-97. If you do not have antibiotics and the wound has become severely infected, does not heal, and ordinary debridement is impossible, consider maggot therapy as stated below, despite its hazards:

*Expose the wound to flies for one day and then cover it.
*Check daily for maggots.
*Once maggots develop, keep wound covered but check daily.
*Remove all maggots when they have cleaned out all dead tissue and before they start on healthy tissue. Increased pain and bright red blood in the wound indicate that the maggots have reached healthy tissue.
*Flush the wound repeatedly with sterile water or fresh urine to remove the maggots.
*Check the wound every 4 hours for several days to ensure all maggots have been removed.
*Bandage the wound and treat it as any other wound. It should heal normally.

By no means a pleasant option but an interesting way to remove infection.

Below The Line - How To Vote In South Australia

If Internet Censorship is your main concern this coming election, the following guide has been created online via BelowTheLine.org.au and using the different parties websites and statements on policies to order them.

While they are ordered in preference of internet censorship, the top 2 are ordered based on their ability to influence. The rest are ordered within their preference (against/unknown/for) relatively randomly, except with the Australian Labour Party being given a dead last position, to reduce their influence.

This ballot will result in your vote being against internet censorship, as much as possible.

If you want to change some of the ordering around a bit, feel free to edit the ticket here...
Edit Below The Line - How To Vote In South Australia

Just make sure you keep them in their general positions.

Some information on what positions each party is taking can be found here, though it's good to go over their websites, news articles, and similar...
Australian Political Parties who oppose and support Internet Censorship

My thought exactly. Maybe only elitist snobs took the survey? In fact, according to the study author, the surveys were taken via Facebook, which I would expect already has a bias to it.

Not to mention how many Facebookies call themselves "independent geeks".

Looking at the actual poll "results" (for a better word):

• [iPad ownership] People who plead guilty to sins of indulgence are more likely to own an iPad.Those who identified lust as their biggest sin are 70% more likely, while self-professed gluttons are 88% more likely.
• Macintosh users are more likely to be iPad Critics than Windows users.They’re also more likely to be Owners.Windows users are more likely to simply not be interested.
• Teenagers are over 4 times more likely to be critics than adults in their 40s.
• Critics are like early technology adopters.They lack, however, the early adopters’ trendsetting characteristics.Critics are less imaginative, enthusiastic and extraverted than the average person.
• Teenagers are over 4 times more likely to be critics than adults in their 40s.
• People with kind, humble personalities are unlikely to know what the iPad is.

Odd thing: biggest sin among iPad owners is "Gluttony", among haters "Greed". Most noticeable is the low education of the critics (mostly due to young age, likely)

Facebook is skewed -- perhaps not toward elites, but I wouldn't call it representative of the nation. For example, the study report (linked below) notes that they only used data from people aged 13-49. Alternatively, I suspect you are correct that "if anything, the study is biased towards schmucks."

Perhaps you should try reading the original blog post...

I did. See, I linked to it before! I've even read the actual report.

So no, a homeless man would not qualify as a "selfish elite" in this study unless he was a member of several classes considered "elite". He could, however, be selfish.

The reported information is still all about self-identified psychographics, which is a really lousy foundation upon which to build conclusions. They need to crosstabulate this with some hardcore demographics before the results are useful. You know, like income levels, education, etc.

But wait! The actual report says: "The upper and upper-middle classes are clearly more likely to be iPad Owners. People with household incomes of over $200,000 are 4 times more likely, those earning $100,000-$199,999 are over 2 times more likely, and earners in the $75,000-$99,000 bracket are 32% more likely. This appears to be more a matter of affordability than class taste, however, as people earning less than $25,000 are 50% more likely to wish they could afford an iPad, and those in the $25,000- $49,999 bracket are also more likely to wish they could afford one."

Ah, good, demographics. We can build real conclusions on demographics! And the conclusion is that... people with more money are more likely to buy expensive gadgets.

You are spreading FUD and you should STFU because without actually reading anything about the study you are capable only of spewing total bullshit.

I (heart) you too! Next time I promise to not actually read the study first. I'll also set aside 20+ years of working in marketing and consumer research... and that college education in statistics... and common sense.

Although the writers at MyType may attempt to do an actual study, they post no statistical significance numbers, no methods on how they normalized their bias, and even make the obviously biased mistake of creating two categories or people

Actually, they do. Of course, if you read the end of that document, you also learn that they based this study on the 3% of internet survey takers who were iPad owners or planning to buy. So the 20,000 "owners" are really fewer than 600.

Actually, just looking at the site, it doesn't come off as a competent research firm like Harris-Black and more like a crappy version of any number of internet quiz sites. The "quizzes" they have up look more like corporate astrology style crap than like useful polls of public opinion. (And their methodology specifically says that they surveyed the iPad owners by tucking their questions into one of those quizzes.)

Basically, even if this wasn't funded by an Apple competitor, it looks like it's only slightly better than asking a few people in your immediate family what they think and then generalizing it to the entire population.

I think you misunderstood the study. From the source, it appears that they assessed personality characteristics based on answers to questions in a survey, and compared to self-reported iPad ownership status.

So in fact it *is* the case that iPad owners are more selfish, less altruistic, etc., or at least that they admitted to less altrustic, less kind behaviors in the study (whether admitted behavior and self-perception is somehow influenced by the fact that you just got them to admit to being an iPad owner is a fair question).

Dr Stupid's Laboratory - Build a (back yard) Nuclear Reactor (on page 29)

Reading about this weapon always reminds me of the one in E. M. Unfred's prison on the Moon:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13783502/Weaseljumper-Part-III

"I followed Jae and No-man through the silent corridors of the Penitentiary. The cells were all empty and the doors stood open. The autocams pivoted to aim at us as we passed by. Their plasma dart canisters, which I assumed were empty, hung menacingly from them. I knew what those things could do: they were designed for mob suppression, on the really, really good theory that a quick way to command the attention and respect of a band of Penitentiary inmates driven to insane rage by the monotony of four gray walls and constant subliminal suggestions of happy conformity would be to boil off the unlucky ones in the front row, leaving the rest of the group retching on the nauseating vapors. The plasma dart was a favorite weaseler toy. One had only to be careful not to use it on a weasel, for those fumes would corrode your lungs and your chest would cave in and you would have to be disposed of as toxic waste."

Defendants Mark Elliot Zuckerberg and Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) respectfully submit this memorandum in support of their motion to dissolve the ex parte temporary restraining order (the “TRO”) issued by the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Allegany, in this matter. Plaintiff has utterly failed to meet the procedural and substantive requirements for such drastic relief, and the order issued by the state court is similarly flawed and woefully inadequate.

In his Complaint, Plaintiff alleges that, as a result of a two-page contract purportedly entered into more than seven years ago (and approximately nine months before the founding of Facebook), he is entitled to an 84% ownership stake in the Company. (Id. at Ex. A 4, 8).

Under Paragraph 3 of the contract, the Seller and Purchaser agreed that for each day after January 1, 2004, the Purchaser would acquire an additional 1% interest in the business, per day, until the website was completed ... Upon information and belief, the website, thefacebook.com, was completed and operational on February 4th, 2004.

Zuckerberg appears to be the Seller and Ceglia appears to be the Purchaser. I know this all happened before "thefacebook.com" had a massive user base but from what I can tell Ceglia dropped a grand to Zuckerberg under some agreement that if the website wasn't finished on a certain date then Ceglia would accrue a point of that business per late day? Is that a standard clause or was this some sort of loan shark that the Z-man found on campus after he stole the ConnectU code?

And then, Ceglia waited past the six year mark for the statute of limitations to run out on a breach of contract in New York? He watched Facebook's rise to popularity past MySpace?

Seriously, what kind of contracts do fledgling websites write? And where do they find people to borrow money from that apparently live under a rock in the Appalachians of New York state? Sure is entertaining one way or the other.

The sad fact is, although it sucks to live in China due to censorship and general lack of political freedom, I don't think the US is really as free as everyone seems to think - after all, the US has the largest percentage of its population out of any country:

Figures are for the number of people jailed per 100,000 population, for 2007.
There is a more up to date list (7th edition) but I couldn't find a link for it that didn't require a PDF download.
USA: 714
China: 117
Japan: 58
Australia: 117
UK: 142 (England and Wales)

So don't sit back and congratulate yourself too much for living in a free and open country if you are in the US.
Of course, for many crimes in China you get a bullet in the back of the head - and it is estimated that there are thousands of executions per year.

About half the US population is sitting in jail as a result of drug related offences - due the the war on drugs and 3 strikes policies there.
It's also a big part of the reason why California is going bankrupt.

Of course, as everyone know, Australia is entirely populated by criminals, which may account for the relatively low percentage of us locked up here.

All that said - if China is so damned worried about Facebook being a tool of subversion, - they should start subverting the US using the same tools, if the Chinese system of government is supposed to be so damned good...

Thanks for the attention. One of NTP's PR folks just e-mailed a copy of the company's complaint against Google. There's a copy embedded after the jump of my post, and you can also read or download the PDF via Scribd. I encourage you all to give that document a careful read, then look through the patents claimed (I've linked to the relevant USPTO pages in the post as well).

- RP

All digital cellular phone standards in use today (GSM, UMTS, CDMA, etc) encrypt SMS messages and voice calls and it is almost always enabled.

That being said the strength of the various algorithms remains questionable (shameless plug).

But to say it is outright plaintext and broadcast is plain wrong.

I remember hearing the theory that just as we get close to figuring out the universe, it instantly morphs into something more complex and confusing. Personally, it's the best explanation yet into how the universe works.

No, you remember hearing that when we figure out the universe, we win the game:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19550880/GUT-The-Grand-Unified-Theory-A-oneact-play-with-seven-blackouts

There is a slideshow at http://www.scribd.com/doc/33001026/Interpolique on the product. At this time having problems accessing it, so have not read the full thing.

What the product does is go through your code and change in-line SQL to code like this
select * from table where fname=b64d("VEhJUyBJUyBUSEUgU1RPUlkg QUxMIEFCT1VUIEhPVyBNWSBMSUZFIEdPV CBUVVJORUQgVVBTSURFIERPV04=")
Then when called in the database you get inject safe code.

When we break the light barrier, we meet the one true God.

No, when you solve the riddle, you meet the Maker.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19550880/GUT-The-Grand-Unified-Theory-A-oneact-play-with-seven-blackouts

Sorry - there is a lot more to it than that. Perhaps you would like to read up on leadership, and get some kind of an idea what authority is all about? http://www.scribd.com/doc/24200794/Leadership-Applied-Theory

I'm not *real happy* with that pub, as it is quite different than what I was taught - but it uses many of the same concepts, without going into depth. There is related reading on the site - you might find something better than this particular pub.

No government, no organization, can be run without authority. Authoritarism as defined in your dictionary citation is misleading, and doesn't even begin to define what authority is, or what it derives from in a democratic society.

Blind obedience? Good grief. The most authoritarian organizations in the United States are the branches of the military. I was taught that blind obedience is contrary to good order and discipline - I OWE it to my commanding officer to question his orders, and to offer advice when it is pertinent. My commanding officer(s) RELIED on me to be thinking, watching, learning all the time.

Phhht.

If that idiot definition is what all the other people here think authoritarian people think and do, no wonder this has been a crap discussion in many ways.

In this CBS News link, it is reported that Rosenberg--like almost everyone else in Park City--is actually fron Los Angeles. This is also covered in the complaint filing. CBS news writes that she was walking down the middle of the road when she was hit. This is a VERY busy multi-lane road, with a lot of SUVs full of Californians rushing to Deer Valley driving well over the posted speed limit. Does anyone else find it ironic that the person filing a lawsuit under what is basically the Nuermberg Defense is Jewish? Or at least has a Jewish name....

If someone has a place they can host a pdf of the glyph page as pdf that might be helpful, but unfortunately I'm not up on how to coax open source tools to generate pdfs with embedded fonts (up until now I always used LaTeX for serious math) - anybody know of a good way? Also be warned that offering up such a page for a slashdotting will be inviting a beating for a server and bandwidth - that'll most likely be a pdf with over 400 pages plus the embedded font payload.

When it comes to fonts, most people expect to see something along these lines:

http://www.linotypelibrary.com/1563/universalmathematicalpi-family.html
http://www.typography.com/collections/index.php?collectionID=700007

Put together some representative samples of the a handful of typical glyphs and build a few images along those lines. If you want to upload a full PDF with embedded fonts, throw it on Scribd or use drop.io and let them take the beating... they're good at it.

Despite rumors that we are ordered to filter by keywords for the US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order.

The isoHunt announcement is dated April 5 Annonucements. The permanent injunction was filed May 20th. isoHunt Permanent Injunction

The court had this to say about its right to act:

The Court further clarifies that this injunction covers any acts
of direct infringement, as defined in 17 U.S.C. 106, that take place
in the United States. To the extent that an act of reproducing,
copying, distributing, performing, or displaying takes place in the
United States, it may violate 17 U.S.C. 106, subject to the generally
applicable requirements and defenses of the Copyright Act.

As
explained in the Court's December 23, 2009 Order, "United States
copyright law does not require that both parties be located in the
United States. Rather, the acts of uploading and downloading are each
independent grounds of copyright infringement liability." Summary
Judgment Order at 19. Each download or upload of Plaintiffs'
copyrighted material violates Plaintiffs' copyrights if even a single
United States-based user is involved in the "swarm" process of
distributing, transmitting, or receiving a portion of a computer file
containing Plaintiffs' copyrighted content.

Doesn't the latter mean that whichever party is in the US falls under US law? The only party in the US is the (american) user of isohunt. I don't see how this refutes the argument that isohunt is in Canada and can subsequently ignore this order. What I do see is that the american isohunt user is now potentially in trouble (ie. if some copyright holder can prove this user downloaded torrents from isohunt, this order will make it easier on them).

You know what would be funny in a black humor sense (African American humor for the politically correct)?

If this rig, the BP's Atlantis, which apparently never even submitted its blue prints for any inspection and is drilling some place even deeper and with more oil also sank and created another oil geyser at the bottom of the ocean. It's possible, apparently BP found some issues with Atlantis and of-course it would be even a worse disaster.

I bet BP has learned so much by now, they can plug a new leak where Atlantis is in no time and everything will be hunky dory. Oh wait a second...

Despite rumors that we are ordered to filter by keywords for the US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order.

The isoHunt announcement is dated April 5 Annonucements. The permanent injunction was filed May 20th. isoHunt Permanent Injunction

The court had this to say about its right to act:

The Court further clarifies that this injunction covers any acts
of direct infringement, as defined in 17 U.S.C. 106, that take place
in the United States. To the extent that an act of reproducing,
copying, distributing, performing, or displaying takes place in the
United States, it may violate 17 U.S.C. 106, subject to the generally
applicable requirements and defenses of the Copyright Act.

As
explained in the Court's December 23, 2009 Order, "United States
copyright law does not require that both parties be located in the
United States. Rather, the acts of uploading and downloading are each
independent grounds of copyright infringement liability." Summary
Judgment Order at 19. Each download or upload of Plaintiffs'
copyrighted material violates Plaintiffs' copyrights if even a single
United States-based user is involved in the "swarm" process of
distributing, transmitting, or receiving a portion of a computer file
containing Plaintiffs' copyrighted content.

Yes indeed, Germany doesn't use common law. Why should they? Common law is only used in a few countries, and hasn't proven superior to civil law. Under common law, a few corrupt judges (not elected by the people) can make something silly into law. Under civil law, politicians (elected) have to vote it into law. (Granted, that might not make things better in a plutocracy such as the USA, but there are democracies in Europe that aren't that much hollowed out yet.(*)) The difference between common law and civil law is very important in this debate. I feel the OP is overreacting - the political fight against European software patents is far from over.

(*)Here's links to the infamous Citigroup plutonomy memos. While extremely cynical, they're mostly right: some countries are ruled by whoever has the money to finance political campaigns and influence the media, and these countries will do anything that is in favor of big companies, not necessarily in the interest of the people. Not all countries are like that.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2

Yes indeed, Germany doesn't use common law. Why should they? Common law is only used in a few countries, and hasn't proven superior to civil law. Under common law, a few corrupt judges (not elected by the people) can make something silly into law. Under civil law, politicians (elected) have to vote it into law. (Granted, that might not make things better in a plutocracy such as the USA, but there are democracies in Europe that aren't that much hollowed out yet.(*)) The difference between common law and civil law is very important in this debate. I feel the OP is overreacting - the political fight against European software patents is far from over.

(*)Here's links to the infamous Citigroup plutonomy memos. While extremely cynical, they're mostly right: some countries are ruled by whoever has the money to finance political campaigns and influence the media, and these countries will do anything that is in favor of big companies, not necessarily in the interest of the people. Not all countries are like that.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2

The argument that "it would put too big a burden on networks to police their own material" is not at all the primary one in the amicus curae being discussed - go ahead, read it for yourself (yes, yes, I'm new here etc).

Rather, they argue that DMCA is supposed to protect providers only in cases of "innocent infringement", i.e. when they're not aware that material they host is infringing. They furthermore claim that, in YouTube's case, Google does know, or reasonably suspects (which is "good enough"), that most of material being posted onto the site is infringing, even if they do not know that about every individual video being posted - they refer to it as "willful blindness". They furthermore claim that Google, while knowning this, essentially ignores that, and "abuses" DMCA safe harbor by only performing post-infrongement take-down by request, while profiting from ads displayed while playing all those infringing videos before they're taken down.

I believe this is a reference to those claims -made by YouTube owners and Google managers in private during the take-over, which we've seen in previous court documents - with stats for overall count of infringing material (which was way over 50%).

Now, whether this is a valid legal argument or not, I do not know. They do reference DMCA there, as well as some relevant court cases, which they claim support this point of view, but, of course, we'd need a legal expert to clarify that.

The summary and the article linked within are (purposely) doing a poor job of representing the actual position of the attorneys. I wasn't comfortable thinking they were that blatantly stupid and greed, and so dug a little deeper:

(From http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/viacoms-friends-lend-support-in-youtube.html)

Viacom's friends lend support in YouTube case

Two groups supporting major copyright owners have filed amicus briefs in support of Viacom in its copyright suit against Google and YouTube.

The first, filed on behalf of a coalition including ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., and others, makes three main points:

  - Congress enacted the DMCA to combat -- not protect -- copyright infringement;

  - The DMCA Section 512(c) safe harbor does not provide a defense to inducement liability;
and

  - Section 512(c)(1)(B)'s language denying the safe harbor where a site derives "a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service
provider has the right and ability to control such activity," should be interpreted consistent with the "right and ability to control" standard from common law vicarious liability.

The second, from the free market-oriented Washington
Legal Foundation, focuses on the legislative history and purpose of the DMCA's safe harbors, arguing that the law mandates a "shared responsibility" among copyright owners and online service providers in addressing infringement, and does not relieve sites like YouTube of all obligations to fight illegal use of others' works, especially while profiting from it.

So their argument goes a little deeper than 'waaaaaaaa' as some of my fellow slashdotters have summarized it.

Against the actual argument, however, I think YouTube's most logical response would be to stop policing the content themselves at all. The position here seems to be that YouTube is a facilitator by not completely blocking copywritten content. A fair response would be for YouTube to step out of that role and give the content providers the power to do this directly. Vis-a-vi, allow the big media companies to sue those providers directly. By the way, if you haven't noticed, the providers are the individuals making content and posting it to YouTube... you know, the end users.

The summary and the article linked within are (purposely) doing a poor job of representing the actual position of the attorneys. I wasn't comfortable thinking they were that blatantly stupid and greed, and so dug a little deeper:

(From http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2010/05/viacoms-friends-lend-support-in-youtube.html)

Viacom's friends lend support in YouTube case

Two groups supporting major copyright owners have filed amicus briefs in support of Viacom in its copyright suit against Google and YouTube.

The first, filed on behalf of a coalition including ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., and others, makes three main points:

  - Congress enacted the DMCA to combat -- not protect -- copyright infringement;

  - The DMCA Section 512(c) safe harbor does not provide a defense to inducement liability;
and

  - Section 512(c)(1)(B)'s language denying the safe harbor where a site derives "a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service
provider has the right and ability to control such activity," should be interpreted consistent with the "right and ability to control" standard from common law vicarious liability.

The second, from the free market-oriented Washington
Legal Foundation, focuses on the legislative history and purpose of the DMCA's safe harbors, arguing that the law mandates a "shared responsibility" among copyright owners and online service providers in addressing infringement, and does not relieve sites like YouTube of all obligations to fight illegal use of others' works, especially while profiting from it.

So their argument goes a little deeper than 'waaaaaaaa' as some of my fellow slashdotters have summarized it.

Against the actual argument, however, I think YouTube's most logical response would be to stop policing the content themselves at all. The position here seems to be that YouTube is a facilitator by not completely blocking copywritten content. A fair response would be for YouTube to step out of that role and give the content providers the power to do this directly. Vis-a-vi, allow the big media companies to sue those providers directly. By the way, if you haven't noticed, the providers are the individuals making content and posting it to YouTube... you know, the end users.

Tried from IE 8 (freshly installed yesterday) and was asked to get flash. It appears they're still transitioning their site and haven't sanitized their links going to the "bad" format.

It seems going straight to www.scribd.com and clicking on the "titular" document there failed.I couldn't find any direct link from TFA, so I can't see where other posters got the working link.

Working link is http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5
Broken link from scribe's site is http://www.scribd.com/doc/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5

Tried from IE 8 (freshly installed yesterday) and was asked to get flash. It appears they're still transitioning their site and haven't sanitized their links going to the "bad" format.

It seems going straight to www.scribd.com and clicking on the "titular" document there failed.I couldn't find any direct link from TFA, so I can't see where other posters got the working link.

Working link is http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5
Broken link from scribe's site is http://www.scribd.com/doc/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5

Well, if you are going there anyway to check it out, you might as well go to my documents:

http://www.scribd.com/sascoggin

I cannot search for text with the Firefox' find dialog. But they say, that their documents are now fully part of the HTML infrastructure, so they should be searchable, no? Try their self-introduction for HTML 5 and see, whether you can search for "Highlight me!", which is in the middle of the document.

Or I'm doing something wrong here?

Check http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5, it has a blue box to the right, with the title "Reading just got better", where you can switch to HTML5 mode
(I'd really say "HTML mode" since it works in IE too.... the whole HTML5 vs Flash argument for Scribd is just flamebait/publicity stunt).

Furthermore, I find their "major reason" that HTML5 supports all the major points of the site's previous functionality to be a blatant lie. To give one example - ok, HTML5 supports webfonts... but how exactly are you going to license the fonts from Adobe (or any other font foundry that doesn't give away the font for free)?

Don't get me wrong: the ability to select, search (*) and so on is great, and could be a very good reason per se to switch. But I don't think that the solution is to flame things up.... just go the Google way, they added HTML5 video on youtube (where possible(!) ) and didn't make so much fuss about scrapping a plugin that enabled them to have a business in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that this is going to backfire for scribd in the future, as they have set some not-so-realistic expectations with their messaging, in the hopes of getting lots of publicity. This whole HTML5 craze reminds me of the similar period when XML was fashionable and thought (by some) that it will replace SQL databases, and would become the universal-good-for-all-storage-format. Guess what, Oracle is still around :)

(*) Search doesn't really work in my experience... check http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5. If you select text in a box you can then search (& find stuff in that box), but not in all boxes; for instance, try searching "me three".

Their own introduction:
http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5

Of course they won't pay for it all, but you said that they can't afford to pay for it, well they can.

BP could afford to pay every last penny for the damage done and income lost, with 26 billion in income and over 236 billion in assets they can afford it.

With BP's record here in Alaska of spills and botched cleanups someone should push them into paying for all the damage done in the Gulf, and go after their contractors and everyone else involved.

BP really should only be on the hook for 65% of the costs.

RIG Deepwater Horizon rig owner
BP 65% working interest (operator)
APC 25% working interest (operator)
Mitsui 10% working interest (operator)
CAM Manufacturer of blowout preventer (BOP)
HAL Provided cementing services to the rig

Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC.N) - The Houston company owns a 25 percent nonoperating interest in the well.

It was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard, Ulsan, South Korea in 2001.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30850121/Deepwater-Horizon

If BP can't afford to clean it all up, then they can liquidate and other Supermajors can buy up the assets after the claimants sell it all.

Not sure where you got those facts, but it looks to me like they own a 65% interest in the well. While it could be argued that a "working interest" doesn't imply ownership, it pretty much says 'owns' to me. Mitsui owns 10% and Anadarko the remaining 25%.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/30850121/Deepwater-Horizon
RIG Deepwater Horizon rig owner
BP 65% working interest (operator)
APC 25% working interest (operator)
Mitsui 10% working interest (operator)
CAM Manufacturer of blowout preventer (BOP)
HAL Provided cementing services to the rig

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3011545120100430
"Transocean Ltd (RIGN.S) (RIG.N) - The Zug, Switzerland-based company owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon Rig. The rig went into service in 2001 and was drilling the Macondo prospect about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) - BP hired Transocean's rig at a rate of about $500,000 per day to drill the well. BP is the project's operator and has a 65 percent working interest in the well.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp (APC.N) - The Houston company owns a 25 percent nonoperating interest in the well."

http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.html?LayoutID=17
It was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard, Ulsan, South Korea in 2001.