Don't want to sidetrack from the main conversation, but Nathan Myhrvold seems to have a very impressive past [1]. He studied QFT under Stephen Hawking at Cambridge.
By all accounts he's remarkably accomplished and intelligent. To make everything worse, he's already impossibly rich. It's as if he's decided to just make the world a worse place because he can.
I do not know the man well enough to pass any judgement on him. But, your statement [1] raised a question in my mind: On the wiki page, there is an outline of his plan to eliminate global warming through geoengineering. I assume this will cost a lot of money. What if he is trying to build up his wealth so that one day he can fund a massive geoengineering project to help the earth's climate? He has demonstrated the desire at least.
[1] " It's as if he's decided to just make the world a worse place because he can."
I am torn. I would love to purchase the books, yet at the same time I don't want to give any money to someone that could potentially sue me and my company for everything it is worth...
Only book four is on the internet as a torrent, and as an owner of the actual books, it doesn't even slightly come closer to comparing. The real books are stunning, and full of fantastic knowledge. They're works of art, and an encyclopaedia of cooking, food, hygiene and nutrition knowledge.
I'm sure they are, also judging from the pics on Amazon. Like the TAOCP of cooking. My response was more about the karma Myrvold has engendered for himself.
Charlie Rose interviewed Myrvold in 1996: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7896274730082503348 [lots of internet predictions/discussion]. It's truly fascinating how much the world has changed and how much things are the same... (half-way through, but hoping to catch him contradict himself on patents.)
P.S. Here are some other interviews he has done with Rose over the years:
[1] : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold