Oh and there is an eight:

The claim to be rated by the better business bureau has been shown to be false. KlearGear makes several such claims that have been shown to be false for the purpose of gaining business. That meets the legal definition of fraud. In addition to creating the possibility of criminal sanctions, fraud voids a contract.

The Bill of rights is also enforceable on state governments.

KlearGear is attempting to enforce a purported contract term, guess what regulates contracts, oh yes, its the courts. And guess what the courts are part of, oh yes they are part of the government.

One of the sources of the Bill of Rights was precisely a concern about the government 'privatizing' censorship. That is how the British libel laws came into being, the purposes were to reduce the number of duels by providing an alternative dispute resolution process and to enable the rich and powerful to suppress their critics. It is no coincidence that in the 20th century the UK libel laws were used by a long series of corrupt bastards to suppress legitimate criticism, from John Major, the adulterer suing the New Statesman over an allegation of adultery, to Robert Maxwell the guy who stole almost a billion dollars worth of pension funds, to Jeffrey Archer and John Aitken who went to jail for perjury after making fraudulent libel claims.

The breach led to the contract being voided. KlearGear never delivered and Paypal refunded the money. So there was no exchange on either side.

The buyers might have had a claim for non-performance but the idea that the seller could enforce their one sided terms is ridiculous.

A clause that prevents reporting the failure to perform is certainly not going to be valid, not even in Texas.

The contract clause is unenforceable for multiple reasons. The first amendment has a bearing on one of them.

First there is no contract, The goods were never delivered, KlearGear failed to perform its obligation, there was never an exchange of a consideration. Therefore no contract.

Second, the original agreement was with the husband, the comments were made by the wife.

Third, the contract terms were added after the original agreement as is demonstrated by the Way Back Machine archives

Fourth, even if there had been a contract it would be a contract of adhesion. The seller defines the terms and the buyer has a weak negotiating position. In such cases civilized jurisdictions (i.e. not necessarily a corrupt jurisdiction) generally strike out clauses that are surprising or contrary to normal practice absent clear proof that the buyer was aware the term existed. A line of text in a fifty page contract in 6pt type is not normally enforceable.

Fifth, the term in question was unconscionable which means that it offends the basic principles of commerce and/or society. Constitutional precedent and in particular the first amendment is frequently used to establish that a clause is 'unconscionable'. Kleargear is not 'violating' the first amendment but the courts are not going to enforce a contract term whose purpose is to take away constitutionally protected rights.

Sixth, even if all the above were not so, the claim for $3,500 is a liquidated damages clause and thus invalid. As a matter of public policy, corporations are not allowed to set fines.

Seventh, the amount was clearly in dispute. Thus the reporting to Experian was in breach of the fair credit reporting act.

I am sure that there are weaker claims out there, but I can't think of one offhand.

Not an IETF list.

It is not even meant to be a proposal.

The point of the document is that I took all the points that had been made five or more times already and put them into one document so that we can move the discussion on to the next stage. Otherwise every time we get a new person joining the group we have to go through the same thing all over. And the third or fourth time round it becomes 'we already know that', 'NOO you are trying to censor me, NSA plant!'.

It isn't meant to become an IETF draft, they would make me take out all the fun parts. Like pointing out the abject incompetence of an organization that lets a 29 year old contractor with a pole dancer for a girl friend have access to that material six months after joining. Why do Alexander and Clapper still have jobs? And spying on US citizens and then trading the raw SIGINT with foreign powers that are certain to share it with my commercial competitors? What were these idiots thinking?

There is work going on in IETF and in fact we started before his Bruce-ship made his call to arms. I doubt the PRISM-PROOF branding will stick. But it is powerful mind share as this story proves. We have botched deployment of almost all the security protocols developed in IETF except for TLS and that succeeded before it went in. This is a chance to hit the reset button and fix the mindbogglingly stupid deployment gaps. Like having no standard way to discover recipient keys and having two different message formats (OpenPGP and S/MIME) forcing people to choose between two key endorsement schemes rather than allow them to pick the one suited to their needs.

Yes, I do think there was interference in the past efforts but I suspect it was subtler than most imagine and not coming from the NIST folk. Rather, I think the interference came from folk who would encourage both sides in technical disputes to dig in and refuse to compromise, folk who participate with no visible means of financial support and seem to have limitless time to write drafts but are not very technical.

Hmmm I replace my hard drives when I start to see RAID errors. I don't plan to run SSD raid as the on board fault tolerance should be ok.

Would be nice to have hard data on expected failures so that I know whether to plan for a three or a six year lifespan. I generally replace my main machine on a six year cycle as I have a lot of expensive software. Looking to upgrade this year when the higher performance intel chips launch.

1tb is quite a lot. Probably more than I need in solid state. The price is also quite a bit more than the $0.05/gig for Hard drives. But it's getting a lot narrower. And RAID 1 doubles that cost anyway...

I think that Ballmer is a decent operations guy, but obviously not a tech visionary, nor does he have good taste and an iron fist the way Steve Jobs did. I think that Microsoft was in a very strong position when he took over and that it just isn't that hard to keep Microsoft on its current glide path given a halfway decent operations guy in charge. John Sculley, who is widely viewed to have run Apple into the ground, could almost certainly done just as good of a job running Microsoft as Steve Ballmer. I realize this is speculation, but I think its true.

O_o

I think you forgot to call me Hitler ....

Ah, ok. Yeah, Mao is just as good ....

Oh, but it is, and you are.

Most people will only have a set number of children in their lifetime. For the majority in the western world, that's somewhere between 1 and 3. If you have one disabled child, and you were only planning on having 2 kids, you're unlikely to now change your mind and have 3.

Additionally, depending on the exact medical condition, a deformed child may impede your ability to have further children. You may have been planning on having 2 kids, but due to the added attention and cost associated with a handicapped child, you find yourself unable to afford any further children. So instead of 2 healthy children, you end up with one who is disabled.

Either way it doesn't seem like a good trade, to me.

The decision to become a heroin addict is a deeply personal one also, yet we seem to have no difficulty legislating against it. Even if you could successfully argue that "personal issues" should not be legislated, that still doesn't mean we can't do ANYTHING about it. At the very least we can make sure that people are educated on the issue, and are given the information and advice needed to make the right decision.

Wait 'til the mid-life crisis starts. It won't be pretty.

Nope. This kind of discovery, pushing the frontiers of knowledge, is the only thing we as a species do that's of any value. Spending all of our effort trying to "fix[...] the current issues of the world" would just drag us down to the lowest common denominator.

Let the current issues of the world fix themselves or die trying.

You got that completely backwards - AC loses more power than DC on wire runs. That's one of the reasons why the massive very-long-distance lines tend to be DC. I'm not sure about the shock risk, but I don't think it matters much anyway. The biggest issue is that A/C is very easy and cheap to "step down" to lower voltages, whereas it was extremely difficult to do for DC until just recently, and it's still pretty expensive.

Your USB idea is interesting. I guess you could have a hub in the ceiling of each room, powered by the regular A/C current, then run regular USB cables from that to all lights, and a couple slots on each A/C outlet for other devices. If you connect all the hubs together, it would be awesome for a "Smart Home" - have a server in the basement that controls all your lighting and smart appliances, while acting as a media center and storage for your portable devices. It would be a niche market at the moment, but I could see it becoming more popular in the future. Of course, by then it will probably be a completely different standard anyway ...

Sure, the similarities are obvious. As are the similarities between anti-tobacco and the anti-vaccine lunatics. Hell, who needs science, right? All we need is a small group arguing with a big group! Clearly the small guys are always right!

Please.

Even the creationists have their "professionals". Pick any bunch of half baked fucktards, and they'll have at least a handful of "professionals" to give them that air of legitimacy. They're still idiots. What matters is what the science shows. The reason we know that tobacco is harmful is because that's where the evidence led us. Billions of dollars paid by tobacco industries didn't make any fucking difference, other than creating a controversy for a little while. For those of us who care about what's true, shit like that makes no difference - where the evidence leads, we follow.

Yeah, look, I don't care. If your evidence consists of conspiracy theories, just give it a rest. I want real evidence. You can "prove" pretty much anything you want by appealing to conspiracies. Until you show me something that doesn't hinge on vague accusations and random correlations, you can't realy expect me to take you seriously.

Also you might want to check an impartial source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy

I haven't actually read the wikipedia article, but I feel confident that it does a good job of relaying the relevant info while dismissing all the bullshit. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

A peer reviewed study which has been replicated by numerous independent sources, and has not been contradicted by any well-designed studies. That's pretty much the gold standard. I'm willing to bend, but you need to make a damn good case for why your evidence doesn't meet those standards.

Yeah, the nature-nuts do have a lot in common with the anti-AGW folks, don't they? Relying on a handful of "experts" and a bunch of anecdotes, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Nice example!

If you could provide that list of countries with a lack of diabetes, and the substances they banned (like I keep asking), that would be wonderful. Or just admit you were making it up, so we can dismiss your initial point and move on.

Sure, and there are a lot of professionals who are cranks. What matters is what the science/evidence shows.

That's technically accurate, and thanks for the correction.

It's not a filler - it's a sweetener. It doesn't add bulk, it just adds calories. The lettuce on your BLT is a filler - it adds bulk without (much) calories.

Heh. Well I'm not a big fan of Taco Bell. Only thing I like there is their "Fries Supreme", and apparently that's not even sold in the US. But I'd like to see some evidence for your claim. Because taco bell claims otherwise:

http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/foodfacts/BeefQuality

The relevant bit:
"After cooking our 100% premium beef, we remove and drain off excess fat. Then we add water for moisture, along with our signature blend of 12 authentic seasonings, spices, and other ingredients - much the same way you prepare taco meat at home."

Of course, they could be lying, but given all the myths that get passed around about fast-food, I'm more likely to side with them than with you. Some evidence to support your position would be wonderful.

Taste is entirely subjective, so I'm not going to go into that. It has no relevance to the health claims, anyway.

Look, I really don't want to get drawn into extended back-and-forth Fisking. I didn't read all of your links, because the first one seemed questionable on the face of it. I picked one semi-randomly, and it was the Mayo article (almost always a credible source). Here is what that article says:

"At this time, there's insufficient evidence to say that high-fructose corn syrup is any less healthy than other types of sweeteners. We do know, however, that too much added sugar â" not just high-fructose corn syrup â" can contribute unwanted calories that are linked to health problems, such as weight gain, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and high triglyceride levels. All of these boost your risk of heart disease. "

That is the crux of what I said earlier. It's calories in vs. calories out. That right there is the biggest issue with Americans. You eat more calories on average than other nations, and you get less exercise than many. The excessive use of HFCS is a part of that, but the insane size of your portions is - in my opinion - equally responsible. Regardless of the individual contributing factors, the real cause of diabetes is (as I already stated) excessive caloric consumption, and poor fitness. Blaming it on "preservatives" and "additives" is silly - the only thing you need to look at is how many calories are in the average persons daily intake, and how much exercise they get.

Of course, the quality of a diet is important when it comes to other considerations - you require certain nutrients and vitamins which you might not get if you eat junk food all the time. But that also has nothing to do with diabetes, and, even in that case, blaming "preservatives" and "additives" would be ridiculous.

Just to be fair, I did go check out one of your crank websites too; the list of "10 worst food ingredients" is full of the same kind of nonsense as the anti-HFCS arguments. I think it's particularly hilarious that the people who are arguing against HFCS because it provides too many calories are also arguing against aspertame, which provides no calories at all. However, this discussion is getting long enough as it is without getting drawn into 10 new things, so I'll refrain from commenting on the rest.

I asked you earlier for a list of some of the "banned substances" which help other nations avoid diabetes. You didn't really respond to that. If you can give me an actual list of example nations which have lower rates, along with the substances which they ban, I'd be happy to have a look. If you're just going to throw more random half-baked websites at me, then we should probably just call it a night!