Can someone tell me why it's newsworthy that MIT clowns exonerate themselves & blame their victim?

Other than to demonstrate how low some people can go.

This doesn't work. There's no viable substitute for helium, not even hydrogen. The reason helium is so useful is that it boils at 4 K (by far the coldest boiling point of any substance), remains liquid all the way down to absolute zero at standard pressure, and becomes superfluid at 2 K (the only bulk superfluid achievable on Earth).

The boiling point is important because that's how cryogenic cooling works: when you use a circulating liquid coolant, the temperature of the (coolant plus apparatus) system cannot exceed the boiling point of the coolant until the coolant has entirely boiled away, so you get a very consistent and predictable temperature (right up until the coolant is gone). 4 K is below the critical temperature of the most common materials for superconducting electromagnets: niobium-titanium (10 K, relatively cheap) and niobium-tin (18 K, highest known T_c for a traditional superconductor). Hydrogen is not a substitute, because it boils at 20 K; that's noticeably too warm for any traditional superconductor, and even if it weren't, superconductors can handle stronger magnetic fields the colder you chill them, so they'd be less useful in an MRI machine. And you can't chill hydrogen much colder than its boiling point before you hit its melting point, 14 K, at which point it stops circulating and becomes much less useful as a coolant.

The superfluidity is not quite as useful day to day, but it's used to study the behavior of other quantum mechanical systems, such as neutron star interiors, that we can't recreate in a lab. It also forms a rigorous analogy with superconductivity, especially in the case of fermionic He-3, so it gives us a chance to play with a bulk fluid that propagates fluid currents in the same way that superconductors propagate electrical currents. Nothing else can replace it for this purpose.

(Side note: helium is not a truly expendable resource. Of the helium present on Earth, not a single gram is left over from the formation of the solar system; Earth doesn't have the mass to retain helium in its atmosphere. All our helium comes from the alpha particle decay of heavier radioactive elements, like radon. When the alpha particles relax and become neutral helium gas, the gas is trapped by the same gas-impermeable rock formations that trap natural gas. However, the natural recharge rate from radioactive decay is much slower than the rate that we're extracting it and venting it, so if we don't curtail our waste we're going to run out regardless.)

But the DC announcement was not in the past light cone for the Chicago trade. Therefore the information had not yet reached the Chicago public. That is the criterion being judged, not simultaneity. Insider trading, case closed.

(And even if we take the classical limit of c approaches infinity, are we really to believe that a trade conducted within single-digit milliseconds of the announcement was based on consideration of the contents of the announcement? There exist fully automated flash trading systems hooked up to news wire services, but AFAIK even those don't react quickly enough to explain the speed of this trade. Shakier conclusion, but still insider trading.)

Great that you found good people to handle those important things.

Thanks, bro :)

All riggghhhhtttt. Thanks Amicus :) I always wanted to have a big brother :)

Oh. OK. How many words do they want?

The legal fees alone are the killer. Veoh won every round, but had to go out of business due to the legal fees.

In my experience, their primary goal in every instance is to put people out of business, if at all possible. YouTube has been 'playing nice' with them for many years, but they haven't dropped the pending case.

The decision, IMHO, gives you what you need to know about the facts of the case in order to understand the significance of the decision. 56 pages is enough reading in my view, for our purposes. If you want more you can go on PACER and get hundreds of additional pages from the case file.

Yeah, definitely

1. I don't have a paralegal to work on my blog. I do all this stuff myself.

2. The guiding principle of Recording Industry vs The People since its inception in 2005 has always been that it is designed for readers who are smart enough, and serious enough, to read the actual litigation document rather than let someone else tell them what it means.

3. The blog post doesn't link to Slashdot for "more details" it links to it for "Commentary & discussion".

4. Most Slashdotters, I have found, do read the story and litigation document... not every word, but enough to form their own opinions.

5. And no, thanks, I am not looking for you to explain to me what the decision says; I read it, and I know exactly what it says.

Well he shouldn't call something "obscure" just because he's too lazy to read it, and wants someone else to tell him what it said.

Obscure? You calling my blog obscure?

There is no "backstory". Just read the front story.