My insurance went down because I don't crash all the fucking time for the tenth year running with this particular insurer.

Oh, so when they use it as an excuse it isn't a logical fallacy? Nice double standards you've got there.

No, it can still discern light and dark but with no detail.

The EU directive (that has been ratified into local law by most countries) varies according to the type of item, but it does indeed state two years for electronic devices such as phones (white goods get more), after which the onus is on the consumer to prove a manufacturing fault and usually the most you can expect is a repair or replacement. If the item in question is no longer made then you might get an equivalent value *at time of sale adjusted for inflation / RPI* item.

The reason Apple is getting told off all the time is because they try to dodge the law all the time. Dell won't publicise your statutory rights but they don't go out of their way to mislead you into thinking you don't have any.

It *is* a warranty, a manufacturer's warranty, codified under statutory rights law as distinct from an after purchase warranty that is provided by the seller. Thus Apple (the manufacturer) have a manufacturer's warranty for an iPhone and Apple (the seller) can also offer you a (extended) warranty. *Those* are two separate things.

When claiming under manufacturer's warranty your first recourse is the place you bought it from and *they* have to go through the hassle of fighting with the manufacturer (though PC World tried to dodge that when I had a faulty Transformer). However, the seller has to fulfill the conditions to the buyer then and there, making it like a charge back on a card.

My i5 ASUS laptop has a sliding lens cover, so it's not as if this is a radical new idea...

Weasel word bullshit in EULAs does not apply. If you can't take out a clause then you can't enforce any of the contract. There is no middle ground; it's all or nothing.

It stalled (I guess), all I got is the poxy "progress" and a CPU pegged at 100%.

Core i5 with 16GB RAM since you ask with the 32bit VMs getting 2 - 4GB. I only run them one at a time and the Win 7 and 8 VMs run no problem.

Income tax was a "temporary" thing as well...

If a part of a contract that is rendered null and void by reason of illegality or other reason such as advantage to one party to the detriment of the other cannot be removed from the contract then the entire contract is null and void.

Except in USA.

I noticed this slowdown on the VMs I manage for legacy *native* IE6+ (because emulated doesn't cut it, it *has* to be the real thing) last Wednesday. I left one VM "running" Windows Update for 4 hours and it still hadn't finished "checking" for the 11 updates I knew it would want. As I needed to use my machine for actual work I couldn't leave it any longer...

J K Rowling is on record (as are plenty of people who know her personally, like Stephen Fry) as saying her name is pronounced "Row", as in boat or table. Not "roll", "role" (though the French pronunciation of "rôle" is close), "row" as in argument or any other dumb, lazy, couldn't be arsed to say names right variant.

It's like Shrewsbury; Shrews as in, well, shrews, not "shrose" like Shrove Tuesday.

Except that shrimp are high in "good" cholesterol...

Sauce for the goose. You're not going to convince a Buddhist that they are wrong by plastering a rule set everywhere either. But that's OK to do because they *are* wrong, right?

Yeah, like not killing (murdering really, killing in the name of your deity is just fine) being number six.

And the irony of your quote attempting to say that Christianity is right and Satanism (or indeed any other myth) is wrong being that The Screwtape Letters are ostensibly from a senior demon / devil to a younger one...

Though C S Lewis was in full apologist mode after Tolkien told him that Christianity was the only true myth when he wrote that.