In this case, I personally believe that she was discriminated against by the jury, because she was a Native American. She was tried many many miles from where she lived and worked, and did not have a jury of her peers.

1. She wasn't "convicted" of anything; this wasn't a criminal case. She was found liable for copyright infringement by making copies through downloading, thus violating the record companies' exclusive reproduction rights.
2. She was also sued for "distributing" and "making available for distributing", but the judge threw out the "making available for distributing" claim, and there was no evidence offered of the "distributing" claim.

So yes, the only thing she was found liable for was downloading.

1. Capitol is but one of the plaintiffs.
2. The RIAA was in fact running the case, with the aid of the record company plaintiffs.
3. Capitol is a record company, not a music publisher.
4. The case was about the recordings of several different companies.

Agreed

I think most people, both in and out of the United States, see a result like this as absurd.

That's the issue all right. And I think the Court's decision is absurd.

> retired it due to not having any PS2 machines any more.

That isn't a reason to part with a Model M. Get a USB converter (you may have to try a couple) and keep on trucking. I have an original Logitech three button mouse on the same adapter with my Model M. I use the middle click a heck of a lot more than the wheel so prefer an actual button that won't end up sending scroll up/down every time I middle click on a link to throw it into a tab for later reading. Have to clean the mouse out every month or so but other than it is still good to go.

Can I get an AMEN!

I have a pair of em. Thinkpads also tend to have darned good keyboards even after the Lenovo takeover.

If ya spring for the good stuff it lasts. And face it, keyboards aren't something that you need to change out every year or two when you buy a faster machine. Keyboards endure. Old keyboards even have a full size spacebar instead of those almost useless Microsoft mandated keys.

> Its a good idea to have scientists advising politicians on science.

Agreed. But when debating the policy implications of AGW a climatoligist is useless. What insight can they offer into whether cap and trade is a good idea? They aren't economists. If the conversation turns to carbon sequestration they aren't the person to ask whether that is feasable. If we want to talk alternative energy they can't provide any insight on that either. You need different scientists and experts to answer those questions. Climatology is a pretty narrow specialty.

> notwithstanding Mann's dubious practices

But that is just it. Mann is the elephant in the room, you simply can not ignore him. He was so obviously a fraud, and stone cold busted, and not a single voice was raised against him by the warmers. That is called a clue. What more do you want, the hand of God to reach down to you with a graven stone tablet saying "AGW IS A FRAUD!" or something? They didn't care if the science was fake because they aren't interested in the least in science. They have a policy solution in mind and the science will be tortured until it confesses.

AGW may indeed be real. But it is literally impossible to say at this point. The raw data was destroyed and the 'adjusted' data we have left is unreliable. Not only that we would need a lot more data for a lot longer than reliable records have been kept to say with the reliability normally expected from science. We do know the Earth has been both a lot warmer and a lot colder than at any point in the last hundred years. We are making predictions on time horizons as long as our reliable data set of past history and covering that lack with a lot of proxy data of dubious reliability. Doesn't sound very scientific if ya ask me, but I'm just a lay person. But somehow I doubt anyone would build a multibillion dollar chip fab on a theory of such reliability yet we are supposed to entirely reorder our economy on this theory's predictions. And anyone who expresses a doubt is called an idiot, anti-science and worse.

Exactly. I am exactly as qualified to discuss the policy implications of AGW as Mann. Both of us are interested lay people who have studied the issue and can debate it as ordinary citizens as part of the political process. Except of course that isn't how it works, he is held up as an expert. He isn't. Al Gore on the other hand, IS a politician and is actually qualified to debate (I can disagree and experts on my team can take him on, it is politics) the policy side. Where he fails is in trying to go the other way and argue the science. He isn't a scientist any more than I am and it is silly when the media hold him up as an expert on the science, scientists were embarrassed by much of the science in _An Inconvenient Truth_ but because they agreed with his politics they kept their yap shut.

No. I have looked into the HIV/AIDS thing enough to be willing to bet that if it isn't the entire story it is pretty close to it. But when the banhammer came down in the 1980s on any dissent (the science is settled! Settled I say!) there was still some room for doubt. That is the sort of thing that creates conspiracy theories. Especially when you have celebrated cases like Jordan who was announced to be HIV positive how far back and still AIDS free?

There is a lot of areas of scientific inquiry that are simply forbidden. People notice that. There is also a lot of 'settled science' that is probably far from settled. There is a word for that sort of thing. Politics. So the only people who don't believe science has been politicized is the few who agree with so many of the political decrees they don't even see it as a controversy. I.e. progressive academics.