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Dell's Misleading Graphics Card Buying Advice
Barence writes "Dell's website includes a guide to graphics cards for PC novices which contains a dangerous chunk of misinformation. The monitor on the left, labelled as a PC that uses a 'standard graphics card,' is displaying a Windows desktop that's washed out and blurry. The seemingly identical Dell TFT on the right, powered by a 'high-end graphics card,' is showing the same desktop – but this time it's much sharper and more vivid. They're both outputting at the same resolution."
Yeah, but that difference is about an order of magnitude more subtle than shown on Dell's site.
The big difference is that in the UK and EU there's an excellent chance that this is illegal. Strange as it may seem, unlike the US we actually require adverts to be somewhat true - and not just by tacking on a timestretched disclaimer sped up to a garble at the end. For example, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" ad campaign was ultimately sunk because fresh beer does not, in fact, taste better. Although the ASA eventually cleared the advert on the basis that Bud tastes so bad it actually becomes worse as it ages, the damage was done.
I would urge as many of you that summon up the enthusiasm to send a polite email to the Advertising Standards Authority. Since this portion of the Dell website is aimed at UK customers, they must abide by UK laws.
The ASA are actually one of the most capable regulatory bodies within the UK. I've been continually impressed by them demanding peer reviewed evidence from manufacturers to support their claims, and by the decent balance their provide when people complain about adverts that go against their morals/religion.
A few years ago I read that the average number of complaints to the ASA that lead to the advert people pulled was 1.3 . In other words they take every complaint on their merit rather than from public pressure. So if you think an advert violates one of the standards, there is a good chance you can get it pulled.
The badscience forum provides an excellent Activisim section that can help when constructing these complaints.
Unless he's ethnically Korean or Chinese he could get citizenship pretty easily - they make it easier than getting indefinite leave to remain (a "Green Card" in the US I believe) but he'd have to give up any existing citizenships (which is the reason that so few people from Europe / the US do)
Basically, they did say: Water doesn't prevent dehydration. They said: You can't claim bottled water is better at preventing dehydration than tap water, and you're claim implies that.
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Ok dude, take a step back and realize that, contrary to the average internal medicine census, everyone does not have renal disease. Subclinical dehydration ("mild" or 1-2% total body water loss) is extraordinarily common and is generally caused by water loss from sweating ("hyponatremic" dehydration -- though technically still isotonic as it's so mild) or the diminished sense of thirst in the elderly (a pure water deprivation). Both can be treated with oral rehydration using pure water since most people's kidneys have absolutely no problem handling it. Nobody cares if their sodium falls from 143 to 140 because they didn't drink a prescription oral rehydration solution. Heck, even hospitalized patients would do fine with pure water IV if it didn't lyse blood cells (hence using cheap normal saline VS lactated ringer's) because most daily water loss is insensible, i.e. evaporation of pure water during respiration.
With moderate (~5-10% water loss, diagnosis varies by age; most commonly due to diarrheal illness in children) or severe (~15% fluid loss, usually near-fatal and due to bleeding) dehydration, potomanias may develop with pure water rehydration, but central pontine myelinolysis, refeeding syndrome, or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome can occur if electrolytes/glucose are replenished too quickly. That's the reason anyone who's moderately dehydrated should be managed by a doctor.
BTW, I'm not sure what dictionary you're using. Dehydration is "dryness resulting from the removal of water" and hypovolemia is the intravascular depletion of fluids. "Not having enough sodium" is called hyponatremia. "Homeostasis imbalance" could refer to just about anything in medicine, as people develop symptoms of disease when the disease process can no longer be compensated for. "Dehydration" in everyday layperson use corresponds to mild dehydration (verified by studies), and isn't hyperbole at all.