He's sued AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube (so Google ... again!). For some strange reason he did not sue Microsoft. Here are the two primary super-genius patents representing ideas no one else could have come up with:

Having alerted you users all to these items of interest, I will now proceed to pay Paul Allen.

That comparison, though true for a lot of big companies, might falter a bit because of the types and methods of business in which Google engages. The search giant's development platform is the web; their underlying operating environment is Linux with open source. Because of these choices the smaller companies they gobble up are probably very like Google in both technical compatibility and corporate culture.

The good science and documentation is there, and should stand on its own (indeed it does amongst people who appreciate good science and documentation). But the public is caught between good science and propaganda. People end up hearing reasonable "the science says the following" statements in one ear and silly "the scientists are money-grubbers trying to fill their own wallets" tripe in the other. With an extra chorus of "the scientists are trying to destroy America with communism" non-sequiturs for good measure. So for most people, no, you are wrong. The good science doesn't stand much of a chance.

But it wasn't the scientists who politicized the issue. They're knee-deep into the politics as a defensive measure, not because they enjoy punditry. I think they were surprised their results became a political issue at all - after all, you can't vote for or against climate change any more than you can vote down gravity. Mathematicians would get into politics, too, if politicians and pundits started saying you can't computer the square root of a million.

Have patience. He's digging for links to WorldNetDaily, the New York Post, Fox News and an e-mail his uncle forwarded him.

The School Board is a part of - or at least, derives it authority from - the state (municipalities do not exist under the Constitution; their powers are derived from the state). So the real question is, does the first amendment's establishment clause apply to the states as it does to the federal government? The answer is that the Supreme Court has held that first article of the fourteenth amendment compels states to comply with most of the Bill of Rights (relevent text in bold):

So most of the Bill of Rights applies to states, including the First Amendment. The establishment clause therefore restricts the School Board from establishing a religion, which the courts have held can include teaching religiously-influenced non-science in a science class. (That is, until the majority on our conservative supreme court - they of "strict constructivism" - decide to pass an entirely new law taken from their collective rectum.)

Dude, you so forgot the space between the word "pedantry" and the ellipsis. Don't get me started.

Wow, that's impressive. It's so long ago I practically can't relate. How many digits are in her Slashdot UID?

No, you'll be downloading torrents like the rest of us. Noobs will be paying $9.99 and watching ads.

This isn't good enough for some of these commenters, Anpheus. They want to trace each dollar. Here's an analogy: you know how when you deposit a dollar in a bank account, then a year later you withdraw that exact dollar, not any of the others you previously or subsequently deposited? It's just like that.

Not if my pending "method of delivering a blunt patent-infringement threat" patent has anything to say about it.

SCOTUS would never let the bad guys win, or carve out a niche scenario in their majority opinion such that the core underlying question remains fundamentally unanswered ... would they?

No, they'll hold onto it for cross-licensing purposes. The next time a business operating a service that vaguely qualifies as social networking tries to sue Amazon, Amazon plays this card. That's what patents mean to companies like Amazon: they're playing cards in a hand to prevent losing an expensive game. In a pinch Amazon could use it to extract licensing fees, but that's probably not their immediate intent.

That's all very good, Mr. Patent-Law-Reader, but why should we expect a reviewer at the USPTO to be aware of that rule? They don't have time to read legalese: they have patents to grant. Including mine, for a method of storing and nesting hypertext comments in a networked news system. Now get off their backs!

You mean I don't have to keep this thing in the back seat? Funny, the Knowledge was all about streets, and they never covered which bits of the law we could skip. I think I'll dump it in South Ken.