>Then there's the popular ploy of marking a dotted line around the upper portion of a bottle of something and proclaiming "this portion is free!". Another one that really gets me is the slogan "New, Improved!" If it's new, how the hell can it be improved? Or do they really mean "Doesn't suck as bad as it used to"?

I think so.

Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that "new, improved" means that it's a new version of the "old, not yet improved". Then, look at how do the two differ, as per advertisement... and if we assume that the old one didn't have any of the advertised properties, how did they ever get away with selling the stuff in the first place?

Reminds me of "and now you can drag the icon of the document to the icon of the printer, and the document will print", which was a big new thing in W95... except that Ataris and Macs had it years before that.