I first read it as "Feds Arrest Gene Simmons". You can imagine my disappointment.

Slashdoting is one way to solve the problem.

Section by section explanation of the legal speak: http://www.keepthewebopen.com/assets/pdfs/open-act.pdf

Actually, 0% of the USPS funding is through taxes. As an entity, it is entirely self supporting. See: http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/welcome.htm#H12

TFA is not clear if this bans college professors and stud nets from being friends on Facebook et al. There are no high school teachers I am still in contact with, but I do have a few college professors as Facebook friends. And no waiting until after the class either, the law bans friending current and former students.

The largest problem in this debate is that somehow, in the minds of many Christians, believing in Young Earth Creationism has become equivalent to believing in the Bible as the Word of God. It has been pounded into their heads that you reject God if you believe in evolution. Until this changes, you will continue to see stupid stuff like this. YEC is not only very bad science, but poor biblical scholarship as well. A careful reading of the third chapter of Genesis will reveal that the laws of physics changed due the fall of man (Somewhere between verses 14 and 19. Of course, God being God, he can do this at his pleasure). For example, the fundamental laws regarding increasing entropy could not have existed before the fall (At least, it could not have existed as we know them today). My personal theory is that the change to the natural laws took place gradually, finishing at the Tower of Babel, with time sort-of "collapsing" in both directions. (Fits the gradually decreasing life expectancies up to the flood, and the fact that it is about the period in history when the archeological evidence and the Bible start to match up, though not perfectly I admit) The biblical bit of this is, of course, mostly useless from a scientific standpoint. But from a religious standpoint, neatly severs, as should be the case, The Science of Really Old Things, and Religion.

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.