Oh good grief. TFA is about movement of the magnetic north pole. This has nothing whatever to do with the axis of rotation of the Earth, or its axial tilt. A wandering magnetic pole isn't going to cause glaciers, or probably any other climatic effect for that matter. A useless compass is about the maximum inconvenience you're likely to encounter. I suspect this "fair amount of info" about glaciation you're referring to is found on the same web sites as the 2012 apocalyptic garbage you seem to believe.

Quite right. The only thing douche-ier is wearing two Bluetooth headsets at once, one in each ear. I saw a man so clad not long ago.

There are, of course MUD's far older than that which were persistent worlds.

Yes, MUDs are c.1986 or so. However, the patent in question specifies 3D graphics, so MUDs per se are not prior art. They should be...I mean, I am sure I am not the only one reading Slashdot who frittered away thousands of hours on Epic and Bigboy at the end of the 80s, and more than once thinking "I wonder if there's a way for this kind of game to have graphics?" That idea probably occurred to huge numbers of MUD nerds a huge number of times. It can hardly be called an original idea by the time 2000 rolled around.

Whether or not MediaSentry was authorized to download the file is irrelevant...it's still illegal for Jammy Thomas to do the (alleged) uploading.

Correct. Since we are only talking about civil matters, not criminal, there is no burden upon the plaintiff to apply uniformity among whom they choose sue. Put another way, civil suits are about redressing harm, and the plaintiff himself is the sole party in charge of saying who has harmed him and who hasn't. The RIAA can merely say "We see no harm in MediaSentry's filesharing" and that's the end of it.