Was in college back in the Dark Ages (pre-WWW), was hit by this. Bought an expensive (used) Physics text from the university bookstore. Tried to "sell it back" at the end of year, "no, that edition has been sunset, we won't buy it back". Right. So picked up the text, flipped through it - literally could find nothing different except the edition, copyright date, and wording in the preface.

(Got 'em though. Put it on the shelf, and tried again the end of next year. Surprise, they took it...because they knew that year's book wasn't sunset they didn't even check editions. Even gave me more $$ because evidently the new text must've cost more and obviously wasn't initially "Used", so my carefully peeling off the "USED" sticker definitely paid dividends.)

Or The Reg: Kraut Craft Conveys Coherent Cannon

Seriously, how is this a contentious matter?

Hmmm..."Contentious Matter." Now THERE'S a name for this stuff that I could get behind!

Sorry for the vocab nazi-ism but I see this one very frequently and it's finally pushed me over the edge.

It's toe the line. As in "conforming to the order of things by putting your toes on the line like everyone else".

How does "tow the line" make sense? Is fishing somehow conformist?

He must've been trolling...

Having built a number of gravitational wave observatories that have to see a single gravitational wave...

If they must see that same single gravitational wave over and over again, why do we need to keep building more of them? Why don't we build some to see OTHER gravitational waves?

;-)

...when he said that he might have been the guy that INVENTED Ctrl-Alt-Del, but that it was Bill Gates that made it "famous"...

Ahh, here's the old Slashdot post on that one.

the single thing a new iPhone will do that an Android won't is the fingerprint thing

My 2011-era Motorola Atrix has a fingerprint reader...

In the "strange but true" category, you can actually convert Turkey into light petroleum. A few years back, a Thermal Depolymerization plant was built next to a ConAgra Butterball Turkey processing plant, intended to convert feathers and other waste into oil.

A Thermal Depolymerization demonstration plant was completed in 1999 in Philadelphia by Thermal Depolymerization, LLC, and the first full-scale commercial plant was constructed in Carthage, Missouri, about 100 yards (91 m) from ConAgra Foods' massive Butterball turkey plant, where it is expected to process about 200 tons of turkey waste into 500 barrels (79 m3) of oil per day.

So, while it may not be "cheaper" to burn Turkey than coal or natural gas, it is arguably "cleaner", at least from a net-CO2 perspective.

StraightTalk is almost never ATT service anymore - you can't even order a StraightTalk AT&T SIM kit nowadays (unless you pay a premium on eBay, I suppose). Interestingly enough: You can get a couple of different SmartTalk smartphones that are activated on the Verizon network.

The higher octane is required in higher altitudes. 87 at sea level will give more power than 91 in Denver (caveats apply)

The main caveat being: That first statement is completely incorrect. As altitude increases, ambient pressure decreases. As ambient pressure goes down, max pressure developed in the cylinder decreases as well. As max pressure decreases, the tenancy for pre-ignition (knocking) decreases. As the tenancy for pre-ignition decreases, octane requirements are lessened.

In other words, all things being equal, higher octane is required in lower altitudes.

(But you are right in your second assertion - assuming your engine will run on 87 octane at sea level, it will indeed make more power at sea level than it will in Denver - mainly because of the increased air density at sea level.)

timothy is in fine form

Same submitter, even!

And thirdly, the Democrats have already argued for a 33% reduction in that very fund themselves:

A tentative deal struck late Tuesday between House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would cut federal healthcare spending by $21.1 billion.

The savings would be used to pay for a "doc fix" that would eliminate a scheduled 27.4 percent reduction in Medicare physician payment rates for 10 months.

Savings include:

- A $5 billion cut to the health law's $15 billion prevention trust fund;

- The elimination of $2.5 billion in enhanced Medicaid payments to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina;

- A $4 billion reduction in so-called Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments to hospitals that take care of people without insurance;

- A $6.8 billion reduction in federal payments to hospitals that collect "bad debt" from insolvent patients, down to 60 percent; and

- Cuts to how much Medicare pays for clinical laboratory tests.

How is it that reducing the funding by 33% *isn't* an attack on women if reducing the fund by a lesser amount *is*?

Most "void if broken" seals can be easily replicated. It's just a matter of getting a replacement seal in time. For the most part, people are dumb. If you do a good job of cleaning off the seal, they'd never notice it is missing.

I'll go you one further--I seriously doubt that "void if broken" seals would even be honored! If they were, any griefer with an axe to grind could quietly slice a "void if broken" seal and arguably void (nullify) any votes cast on that box up until the point that broken seal is noticed -- possibly all day. Unless (of course) the seals are visually checked in between each voter, right? So next time you go to the polls, watch how the lines move, and see if you think everything is visually inspected and verified between each voter.

And if this sort of vandalism did happen, what would you bet that the votes up till then wouldn't be nullified regardless of the state of the tamper seals? What makes you think that this sort of thing hasn't already happened? In past election, seals have been found missing/cut on machines, it's been reported, and it's been ignored and the votes counted regardless, e.g. as reported here. Nice.