The LOC measurement is uncompressed plain text.

The VL measurement is uncompressed images of parchment.

Yes, that wouldn't be admissible under Illinois law (to the best of my understanding, IANAL). Or the law of 11 other states. In New Jersey (where this took place) and most other states in the union, you only need one party's consent.

The CIS includes Russia. Russia is a nuclear state. The ruling does not apply to nuclear states.

Yes, Google has to respect Chinese law if it wants to do business in China. As a result, it has decided not to do business in China. (Well, there are almost certainly other significant reasons as well, but the censorship laws are part of the reason).

There *is* something they can do that would be worse than losing a child. He has another kid, and this one isn't even a step-child. Take the kid away for its own safety, never let him have custody over a child again. And a few years in jail plus a criminal record wouldn't hurt either.

Ah, what is the difference between tritium and hydrogen?

300 million km away relative to what? Could you explain to me why the center of the galaxy is a more privileged reference point then the surface of the earth?

My birthplace has moved with me all this time. That said, it's still about 22 miles away, which puts me in the "over 15,000" category. Honestly, "less then 15,000" would have been a more sensible option...

Perhaps some had an allergy, or their insurance didn't cover it, or their immune system was too compromised for the vaccine to work effectively, or they had an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. Those people would usually be protected anyway by herd immunity, but when people start deliberately not getting a vaccine on a large scale, that doesn't work anymore.

"If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period."

Nobody out there not convinced by the existing lines of evidence proving birds are dinosaurs is going to be convinced by this. And don't kid yourself, there are lots of such people.

"Suppose you were an indie musician who sold your songs online..."

To be awarded damages you have to *know* you were filing a false claim. And at this point the difference between a self-represented indie musician (who accidentally flagged a single fair-use video in a long list of infringing ones) and a team of lawyers specializing in copyright law (who flag every video using any part of "their" songs, with no apparent effort to identify fair use) becomes important. One can argue that they missed some nuance of "fair use". The other really can't. Especially when they do it over and over again with no apparent effort reduce the number of falsely flagged videos.

The point of asking for penalties in this case is not to set a precedent of penalizing every mistakenly sent DMCA claim, it's to change the attitude of "we'll take down every possibly infringing video and let people who think they have fair use file counter-notices" into "hey, lets only file DMCA complaints against videos that are actually infringing."

Red-blue or shutters plus double frame rate aren't the only options. There's also differential polarization and double the resolution. All we have to do is turn half the LED's 90 degrees and enable the proper video format and polarized glasses will do the job of red-blue ones - except you lose the "polarization" channel and half the resolution instead of the "color" channel. And lets face it, you wouldn't notice if you lose your already tiny ability to discern polarization.

Easy, the TV. Why? Because it's easy to implement with LED's, and we already have LED TV's. Even if no 3D programs are available (and with movies coming out in 3D at least DVD/blu-ray stuff should be soon...) some people will pay extra for the "3DTV" (or whatever) printed on the box.

Here's the thing... if you start out assuming that life might be radically different, you finish with "and that's why it's impossible to detect life with modern telescopes." On the other hand if you assume at least some life is like our own, you can find an earth sized planet in the habitable zone and then see water and organic molecules and conclude that there's probably life. In the mean time our telescopes will improve, and maybe eventually we'll be capable of taking a broader look with some hope of results.

Google starts many of their services as invite-only. Consider it a beta test where the testers have to pay for the privilege, and are strictly limited in number. As opposed to all the other recent smartphones where the beta testers had to pay for the privilege but weren't limited in number.

Hooray, what I must assume is deliberate ignorance.

Look, educate yourself on the difference between the MAGNETIC north pole (the one defined by the magnetic field, probably caused by movement in the molten core of the earth, who's only serious influence on the earth is the direction compasses (including the ones inside a bird's head) point) and the GEOGRAPHIC north pole (the one defined by the rotation of the earth as a whole, which defines the coldest parts of the world).

The MAGNETIC north pole drifts constantly and flips occasionally (though not what one might call "regularly"). This is not accompanied by any cataclysmic extinction event, and takes place over dozens or even hundreds of years. It did not happen during the Mayan or Egyptian cultures, and unless you think they were sending probes to the mid-Atlantic ridge they were unlikely to even be aware of it much what able to predict it better then modern science (which says the field will probably begin flipping sometime in the next 10 to 200,000 years). The magnetic north pole has no influence over how cold it is in any given place on earth.

The GEOGRAPHIC north pole doesn't drift appreciably, or flip - ever. If it did flip, the most obvious sign would be that the sun would rise in what we currently think of as the west, and set in what is now the east. Also, all the stuff that got flung into space as the earth stopped spinning suddenly and then started up again in the opposite direction. Or if it happened more gradually, summers and winters would gradually get more extreme until the entire world spent half of every year (as opposed to half of every day) in the sun, and the other half in the shade, at which time the trend would reverse until it came to a rest exactly as it is now but with the sun rising in what was the west and setting in what was the east. Both methods would take similarly ludicrous amounts of energy, and probably kill most large animals and plants.