This is a really old and mostly wrong story. There was a person who wanted to be paid for his invention, which happened to be a wrong-headed attempt to square the circle. He wanted government money for having done that work. That is what the bill was for. To give him money. He didn't get the money.

The scientific method is for experiments. If you wanted to use it to see if global warming was real, you would make a forecast like "The world will get hotter than it's ever been.", and see if it comes true or not. It did come true. Last year was hotter than it has ever been, globally. Scientists were telling us that would happen for years.

It's time to stop denying. It's time to stop saying "they should use the scientific method" when you know full well they have. You know, that is, unless your head is in the ground or your preferred news network is putting it there.

They already found that: http://blogs.artinfo.com/artin...

"A statue of the Roman half-goat, half-man god Pan - who was the Greeks' god of the wild - getting wild with a female goat (see above) has proven so NSFW (or, in this case, NSFM) that the British Museum has placed a parental advisory in the gallery where it will be on view as part of the upcoming exhibition 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum.' The statue was excavated from beneath some 100 feet of Volcanic ash that enveloped the Villa of the Papyri, the residence of Julius Caesar's father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, on the slope Mount Vesuvius."

Which photo?

I have not been at HP for a long time, of course.

HP has a very long history of buying companies only to unload them for cents on the dollar a few years later. Remember Palm and WebOS? Take a look at the HP Acquisition List on Wikipedia. Not many of those companies were good buys.

This was another of many issues that contributed to staff depression while I was there and continues to this day. We could see it was wrong, but could do nothing about it.

They used to be the company engineers wanted to work for. When I got to Pixar in '81, the engineers that had been at HP were still proud of having worked there. It's really sad what's happened.

"the insurer absolutely will think you committed fraud"

Absolutly yes, of course. Heck! they probably default to think there's a fraud even if lacking any evidence.

A very different thing is for them to *demonstrate* there's a fraud or, at least, being a civil case, that it heavily smells like fraud.

"The police will then report that the skid marks indicate that the car must have been travelling at at least 50mph, not the 20mph indicated by the dongle."

And the insured will claim that his coverage is bound to the dongle as per the contract since his anual bill is also bound to it. So, on one hand, the insured will claim the real-time measures from the dongle are correct and, on the other, that even if they are wrong, his coverage and liabilities are bound to the dongle as per contract.

Another example of the wiki being wrong, at least as far as Westminster based Parliamentary systems. The executive is the Crown or her representative, eg the Governor General or in the case of Canadian Provinces, the Lieutenant Governor. Parliament (or Provincial Legislature) passes a bill, much like Congress though generally the Upper House has been neutered or eliminated, and when the Bill gets Royal Assent, it becomes law. In theory Royal Assent can be refused resulting in a veto, but in practice it almost never happens (over 300 years in England). The executive also does a few other things such as appointing the government based on which ever party or coalition can pass a budget, no budget, no government, usually resulting in an election, occasionally a different coalition.
In practice, with a majority, due to party solitary, the PM can act like a dictator until the next election as his party will pass most any law the PM proposes/supports and the executive will follow the recommendations of Parliament.
Further, in Canada at least, the courts and especially the Supreme Court acts much like the American courts and Supreme Court and can declare laws (or parts of) null and void due to the Constitutionality. In the recent past and I believe even today in New Zealand, Parliament was Supreme and could pass almost any law

"Sadly diverse fields, but not much diversity in hiring. "

And so, here comes the troll of the week.

"And the excess damage?"

What excess damage? You (the insurance company) have the data, and here is my car. There's no "excess damage", just "damage".

Do you think (the insurance company) that my accident should render less damage? That's not my problem, I'm neither a materials engineer, nor I designed my car.

Do you think I commited fraud? Why do you think so? Maybe because you know your devices are easily hackable? Maybe I should sue you (the insurance company) for puting me at risk for your lack of due diligence.

"So, how can you tell by simply looking whether the catalytic converter is working properly?"

A "mechanic to look" is not just "simply looking". By measuring gases at the exhaust pipe you can know about the catalytic converter's health.

So, basically you're saying that you Love the Power Glove?

What a coincidence, the biggest threat to my freedom also comes from your government.

"While "nice guys finish last" is often extrapolated (dubiously) to areas like dating"

There's another adage that outdates this one: "all's fair in love and war" and, in Cervantes' words "Love and war are all one . . . It is lawful to use sleights and stratagems to . . . attain the wished end."

"Some bosses - like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or pre-mellowing Bill Gates were legendary assholes and still got great results out of their employees. There are other people who manage their employees with a gentler hand and play to their strengths, and get good results too."

You see how you had no problem to name some sucessful assholes but still didn't provide any name in the "sucessful but very nice" side?

"just remember that - to fight adage with adage - "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.""

Right. But then, be it either using honey or vinegar, catching all those flies doesn't look like being so nice, once you kill them, don't you think so?

"If you can get an advantage by screwing over someone else, it's not really a fair contest."

Why not? It would unfair if only part of the contenders can screw up the others, but as long as everybody can screw the rest, it's fair. Maybe unethical, but certainly fair.

We'll never really know if he was planning on going to Syria or if he really wanted to get clean and being a crackhead he may well not known as well. As for what the police believe, well they're going to parrot the prevailing current meme that all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslim.