In the UK this sort of thing falls under the "traders tort" law.

Traders can say things like "cheapest price in the UK!" and it is accepted that this need not be verifiably true. A reasonable person would understand that the claim is basically bollocks and is not supposed to be taken seriously.

In the same way it is expected that a reasonable person would not expect a trader to publish negative reviews of their products in their marketing material, be it on the packaging or on their web site. If that makes the OP "unreasonable" then I'd tend to agree with it.

This isn't so much a comment as a request... I've been looking (for years) for an episode that I believe was created during the 80's revival of the series. The episode was about these "blue men" who are constantly building the future, always just a few minutes ahead of us. I've had no luck anywhere finding this ep. It has stood as long running joke with my father and I that if you can't find your keys (wallet, phone, etc) that it was the blue mens fault.

At least in the USA, unfair and deceptive commercial practices are forbidden by the FTC Act, and deception by omission is still deception.

Quoting from the FTC: "Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. The Commission will find deception if there is a representation, omission, or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer's detriment."

The practice of publishing only the positive reviews, without disclosing that fact, appears to be an ommision likely to mislead a consumer, and would therefore be an illegal practice. You didn't say whether the merchant is based in the US, so this may not apply, if they are ouside of US jurisdiction.

Say that again after you've learned COBOL. I dare you.

Majority of Jewish population in Israel is secular. And if you are born to Jewish parents, you can immigrate, regardless of your beliefs (e.g. only a few percent of more than 1 million russian immigrants are non-atheist). However because of a political system called democracy, religious parties have ~20% representation in the parliament. It's not possible to form a coalition without them, so they are given too much power in a lot of matters, and marriage is one them. The workaround is simple - register your marriage abroad and the state recognizes it, even if it's a gay marriage. A lot of Jewish couples, too, prefer to go this route rather than dealing with rabbis.

Yes. The court's job is to decide on the point of law and it's not limited to following the request of either party.

That's true, but they are limited to ruling on the case at hand. SCOTUS has long held that the Constitution limits them to declaratory judgments, that is rulings that involve an actual dispute before them. SCOTUS will not rule that software patents are unconstitutional because they don't promote science and the useful arts in a case about business method patents.

They may, however, rule that machine-independent patents fail that test. However, I suspect they won't, since it's a stupid argument--Congress, not the courts, is given the discretion to choose how to promote science and the useful arts. They may well strike down machine-independent patents, but I highly, highly doubt they'd second-guess Congress based on such a subjective criterion as whether it promotes good stuff, or at least explicitly.

Mind you, even if SCOTUS does lay the smackdown on machine-independent patents, we'll still be in for round two: Whether a compatable computer is a specific-enough machine for patents to stick to it. Unless they rule very broadly, which would be very untypical of SCOTUS, that question will have to go through a full judicial vetting before the question of software patents is settled.

"Bluehenge," ... is believed to have been put up around the time of Stonehenge, 5,000 years ago.

Before Stonehenge, there was Woodhenge and Strawhenge. (But a big bad wolf came along...)
- Eddie Izzard

Google "Newton" and "Leibniz" (at the same time)

"As you can see from the picture above of my Radeon HD5870 sitting on my HD4890, the end plate is more than capable of being held on without wood screws."

Anyone care to explain what the heck we're looking at in this picture? I see what looks like a poor video capture of a couple of video cards, but I can't make out anything relevant.

Maybe this guy has a point, but it's damn hard to see what he's talking about from the pictures. The only one that I agree looks bogus is the one where the board is cut flush with the edge of the housing. It does indeed look like it was cut straight through some things that shouldn't have been cut.

This guy also ignores the fact that surface mount connectors have been commonplace for many years now. The fact that there are no pins protruding through the board means nothing. I agree that it's unlikely that's the case here, but except for that last one, his pictures do a very poor job of backing up his claims. The DVI connector looks fine to me, unless there's a higher resolution version out there I'm not seeing.

I've certainly built working prototypes that looked considerably worse than this. I've got one on my bench now with an SOIC hot-glued to the board and connected by 30 AWG fly wires. I've soldered SMT connectors onto through-hole pads, put SOD-123 diodes on an SMB footprint, drilled extra holes in boards, bent gull-wing parts to fit J-lead footprints, and all sorts of other nasty kludges.

The alternative is wasting days or weeks waiting for new boards or the right parts that could be spent testing the hardware and debugging firmware.

Yes, this is probably a mock-up. Yes, they probably over-hyped and misrepresented it. Is anyone surprised? And does it make any real difference?

From the published article:

Bacon. And steak. A quarter pounder steak. Gotta clog these arteries early in the morning before they start passing blood.

I the arrowkeys on the number pad for playing Civilization 2.

If you're going to grade my argument, then you best be sure you know what you're talking about in the first place. The point I was making wasn't about the numbers of people, but the Elitism. I wasn't arguing about the popularity being right, I was arguing that your view was one of disdain for a large number of people.

No you idiot, the "Those" in the original quote applies to both "that watch" portions. I'll fix it for you, so you can understand exactly what I meant.

And if you didn't understand what I meant, you should have asked for CLARITY rather than being an ignorant grammar nazi.

Citation needed.

Wait, I got one .... http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1

Look for Voting by Education, take a look at those who voted for Obama who didn't graduate HS ... 63% and McCain .... 35%.

I could equally say that most uneducated, and under educated minorities vote Democratic, but you'd call that "Racist", even if it is true. (and is the reason why (D) tend to vote to keep them ignorant, eg School Choice via vouchers)

Blame it on my Public Education then, okay? My parents weren't rich enough to send me to one of those elite private schools where people can get a "formal" education.

I went to public schools and public university and have a degree in Business Finance and I haven't worked a day in the Financial sector since college. I've been in IT. So I'm just a stupid ignorant idiot, yup. Thank you for reminding me how bad public education REALLY is. (That is Sarcasm, in case you missed it).

Oh please, not this tripe again.

For one thing, your invention list is severely flawed. Many things which you say were invented by one group were actually invented by someone else and then developed or refined by another. The Japanese didn't invent hybrids; locomotive and heavy construction equipment makers have been using diesel-electric powertrains for decades.

You're also forgetting the Arabs and algebra and various other things (granted, this was back around 1000 AD, not recently when they've been too busy fighting with each other and everyone else to do anything productive).

A quick google search for "african inventions" yields the following website:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/

Did you know the carbon filament in light bulbs was invented by an African-American?
Or that peanut butter was invented by famous African-American George Washington Carver?
Garrett Morgan invented the gas mask and the first traffic signal.
Otis Boykin invented the pacemaker, among other electronic devices.
And Lonnie G. Johnson invented the all-important Super Soaker.

The reasons for the African continent's problems are explained in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel", and has a lot to do with geography making agriculture much easier in Europe than in Africa, causing Europe to develop faster technologically.

What have you invented? Probably nothing.

I here someone once figured out a way to send signals from a TV station to a TV set without wires. Crazy I know, but true.