Flags have been around for ages, too.

Possibly not as long as you think. The UK, for example, has the second oldest flag in the world and it dates from the beginning of the 19th century (Denmark has the oldest).

Market apologists cling to the belief that businesses would produce products that maim and kill their customers in the face of liability despite centuries of evidence to the contrary.

This is such a horrible sentence. I think you're missing a "not".

Heh, that's what you don't understand. It's one time pads all the way down!!

Vista wasn't crippled by processor speed, anyway, it was crippled by being installed on low RAM systems. That and having lots of shit services running as default.

I'm still typing from my almost 10 year old Vista system on which I play Elite : Dangerous and a whole host of other new games. The graphics card is newer.

You acquire knowledge through reading; through either written words or equations on the page. Knowledge acquistion for humans is inherently and forever a process of abstract symbol processing- we process speech and scratches on a page and transform it into understanding. That's as natural as breathing. Plain text is the once and a future king of the internet.

Suer[sic] somethings are better demonstrated than explained verbally. No one is arguing with that.

It seems like you are.

Writing is a new invention in terms of the history of humanity. A hundred thousand year old caveman could (in theory) understand a youtube video in a language they knew, but they could not read anything. They could also get something from a youtube video even if they did not understand the language. You can't get anything from text if you don't understand it.

There's far more on Wikipedia alone now than there was on the the web in totality in the early days. If you don't like adverts, and just like information, you can just use wikipedia now.

Yes, I'm saying that Wikipedia (one site) now is better (much better) than the entire web used to be.

If you don't like the sites that you're seeing, close the window (or tab). No one is forcing you to go to sites that you do not like.

Cricket is actually a poor comparison as Hawkeye is used to predict where the ball would have gone

That's just one thing that hawkeye does in cricket. To be out leg before wicket in cricket, the ball cannot have pitched outside leg stump. Also to be out lbw when playing a shot, the ball must not have hit the batter outside off stump, which is also checked for. Both of these examples check where the ball has been, and decisions are often overturned on these things.

Also, if the umpire's decision is not out, and the ball is just clipping the stumps (or very close in another area), the umpire's decision is upheld - hawkeye does not overrule the umpire when the decision is close.

do not want new and improved somewhat tolerable intel graphics

This this and more this. Intel graphics are pretty much diabolical everywhere, In every situation.

I miss the single player adventure games like from Sierra and Lucas Arts where you can engross yourself in a story game line, and have work to solve puzzles and you celibate when you continue the story plot, without having to use twitch like hand eye coordination, or play online with a bunch of people just trying to mess you up.

You haven't been following the gaming scene much recently, have you? There are a plethora of high and low budget new games almost entirely based around the story, and lots of people are complaining about them. The Walking Dead, Life is Strange, Game of Thrones, Tales for the Borderlands are all obvious examples of single player story based adventure games. There are dozens of others.

That list shows 17 out of 25 of the world's top pedestrian cities as being in of the US, 2 of those outside being in Canada. That leaves 6 for the rest of the world.

I'm not usually one to complain about lists and articles being US-centric, but that is a little absurd.

What does "idiot" mean to you then? The first definition that comes up when you google it is "a stupid person". "Stupid" essentially means lacking intelligence (when applied to a person).

I'm seriously curious. What do _you_ mean when you call someone an idiot?

We have 12 minutes maximum per hour of advertising on ITV, C4 and C5 because they're regulated by ofcom, not because of competition. They're defined as public service broadcasters, whereas all the other channels aren't. There's actually a limit of 8 minutes an hour on average between 6pm and 11pm, I've just looked this up. What the channels actually do is (essentially) not advertise on less popular programmes, so they can use the 12 minutes per hour later. I'd always wondered why there were so few adverts on the cricket highlights on channel 5. Unfortunately "advertising" does not include self-promotion, or promotion of sister channels, so the cricket advert breaks are mostly filled with that.

I'm not sure what the benefits of being a public service broadcaster are exactly compared to all of the other channels that don't have to abide by these rules and have far more adverts. The channels which show loads of American programmes use the same 1/2 hour slots. The Big Bang Theory, as an example, has a running time of as little as 18 minutes, resulting in 24 minutes of adverts or other cruft per hour.

I used to live near one, Straight road in Colchester. Straight roads in England are usually Roman.

We also had a Roman tumulus literally just behind our back garden. It was excavated early in the 20th century, IIRC, and some stuff they got out of it is on display in Colchester castle. No one knew the tumulus was there, though, there are quite a few of them around Colchester. The house was just a standard suburban house, and as kids we used to play on the tumulus a bit, but it was quite overgrown with brambles etc.

Thu UK is still the 5th (or 6th, France is close) largest economy in the world, behind the US, China, Japan and Germany. It's about 1/6 of the US.

Atheism implies belief in: empiricism, naturalism, evolution and humanism.

It might do to you, that may be why you consider it a religion. It doesn't to me. Just because people who don't believe in a god are more likely to believe some other things than religious people, does not make it a religion. If short people were more likely than others to believe some things, does that make being short a religion?

No one can know that there's no god absolutely. That being said, no one can know anything absolutely (with the possible exception of cogito ergo sum, but that is problematic too). The brain in a jar argument isn't very useful.

All that being said, I believe there is no god. However, this is an entirely pointless question, in my opinion, and doesn't affect my life in any way whatsoever. What affects my life is my lack of belief in some of the more popular gods, and that's what makes me an atheist.

Back on topic, I'm from the UK, and we have a law outlawing incitement to religious hatred. Now I do hate some religions (Scientology, fundamental Christianity, some Islamic sects), and I would encourage others to hate them too.

See what I did there? I just broke the law. Chances of me getting charged with a crime = 0%. Yeah, well I didn't really :

29JProtection of freedom of expression Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

It specifically allows abuse of religions. The incitement to religious hatred law is actually actually pretty specific : "A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred."

Key word : "Threatening". It seems pretty sensible, but the trouble with this, and a whole host of laws that Labour introduced under Tony Blair, is that it was already illegal. They also criminalised setting off nuclear devices in towns and cities. Because that wasn't illegal before, right?