You would do better to read up on why some distros elect not to use systemd, despite the fact that it is becoming quite popular in some quarters. For my part, I consider it to be an unnecessary complication, so am happy that my preferred distro (Slackware) still elects not to implement systemd by default.

I'm going to change my name to William Shakespeare and claim royalties for all those plays (and sonnets, of course) that have been reproduced without my permission. That'll show 'em.

I've heard that it was the Irish who gave the Scots the bagpipes, but the Scots haven't got the joke.

Yes. And there's the piano accordion...

The best definition for perfect pitch is being able to chuck a piano accordion down a well without it touching the sides.

I don't know what world you're living in, but $1325 is real money right now. And I suspect my dog might appreciate whatever that works out at in dog money.

That aside, one of the big advantages of Project Gutenberg's sister sites is that there are servers outside the US that are not tied to predatory American copyright legislation, so many texts that should (by reasonable, ethical expectations) have passed into public domain have often already done so somewhere.

As a professional cheesemaker, (yes, one of the blessed variety), the first question that comes to my mind is:

Why are these people throwing out their brine? This seems an unnecessarily costly exercise.

It is typical practice in many cheese factories (and all of those in which I've worked) to keep and re-use brine (sometimes for decades), with routine and simple maintenance such as topping up salt levels, adjustment of pH, filtration to remove solids and occasional pasteurisation if required.

A "raw" brine of just NaCl and water will, of course, do the job of salting your cheese, but most of the salt is left in solution at the end of the brining process (so it doesn't make sense to throw it away), and the pH will have a tendency to bounce around, adversely affecting the properties of your cheese. The various whey products in a re-used brine help to stabilise the pH, so one usually only needs to top up salt to replace that absorbed by the cheese.

There seems to be a rash of similar posts re Waco in other threads too, and I suspect that the failure to post as AC here was inadvertent. Having a low UID doesn't excuse being a troll.

I don't exactly hate vocals (I was raised as a classical violinist, but my musical appetite now weighs a little more heavily in favour of jazz), but I find lyrics just get in the way when the music should be able to speak for itself. Thus, (from TFS)

just doesn't apply for me. Though of course I have to accept that other people's priorities differ, and I'm fine with that.

What I cannot abide, however, is the current tendency to play unnecessary incidental "music" over spoken dialogue in TV shows. While I accept that my ears are not what they once were (I am well over 50 years old, and if there's one thing I would change if I had to live my life again, it would involve earplugs), I do not accept that these noises contribute anything useful, and frequently make dialogue difficult to hear.

This is a fair point. CyanogenMod's strength is that it offers an upgrade path to a great many devices that have been abandoned by their manufacturers.The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, for instance hasn't seen an upgrade from my carrier in well over a year. CM also offers a clear way to de-googlify your phone, for those worried about Google's monitoring their activity. If you want the benefits of (say) Google maps and navigation, you have to consciously download and install the gapps.

IIRC there were some Russian-made devices that used an RPN interface, though I've never come across one.

But if I were doing it all over again (without slide-rules) I think I would have opted for an HP-15C. That was, and still is, a stupendously elegant piece of hardware.

Heh. You should bring at least two. You never be sure one won't break down or need rebooting. ;-)

[Disclaimer: I have begun to accumulate a small collection of slide-rules. Their combination of simplicity with sophistication is just beyond cool.]

OK, so I'll offer something different.

During my first year at uni, I used to own an HP-48G+ which I loved for its nice keypad and the RPN interface, but the actual device was hopelessly unreliable and had an unwelcome tendency to let me down by throwing hissy-fits during assessments. I eventually got around that particular limitation by replacing it with a TI-89, which (although lacking keypad quality and RPN) was, and still is, a vastly superior device on many levels.

But since this doesn't answer the OP's question, here's my take on it in the light of years of experience since my university studies...

The best calculator for examinations is: NONE AT ALL.

You will get much more kudos for arriving at any kind of solution (however incomplete) if you can show how you started from first principles. Also, you might actually remember how to use these skills years later if you do this.

I would like to be able to say this is what I did, but it would be a lie. I was not a brilliant maths student, since I relied too much on gadgets to help me through assessments. However, I have since revisited the subject and learned how to do it with more insight, and now find a certain pride in being able to "do" maths with no more hardware than a sheet of paper, a pencil and my brain.

Oh, and FWIW, although I still have my TI-89, most of the routine mechanical calculations I perform these days are done on the RealCalc Plus app on my phone.

Look for yourself.

And no, I don't have a girlfriend. I've been married for nearly 30 years... :-}