I hate the whole game they play where they demand an explanation, and then they'll argue with you over it. Why do I need to provide a detailed explanation before they'll stop service? I don't want your services anymore, so just shut if off. Should be simple.

Probably very few. Anyone who wants Windows but doesn't want to pay for it just pirates it instead. Besides, unless they built their own PC, most of those people probably paid for Windows anyway, but for various reasons aren't using the license that came with the computer.

I'm assuming that one of the main reasons why Chrome has so many users is that it comes bundled with so much other stuff that if you're not careful you'll inevitably end up with a drive-by installation of Chrome on your computer.

As for Bing, I don't really find Google's search results to be any better nowadays.

In case anyone is curious, the shekel was actually a unit of weight, weighing approximately half an ounce (like many units back then, the exact weight was not as well defined as units today and varied over time). Not surprisingly coins minted with the weight of one shekel ended up being called by the same name. The shekels accepted for payment for temple tax was about 95% pure silver, which would make the modern value about $8-9 US in terms of precious metal content. The Denarius was about 80% pure silver, and hence considered less desirable by many.

2000 lbs would be a short ton in the English system. A long ton is 2240 lbs, which actually turns out to be 1016 kg, which is considered "close enough" to a metric ton for many purposes. By the way, the metric ton isn't really an SI unit, the proper usage would be a megagram, though most people know what you're talking about.

For people who live in cold climates, 0F is the temperature that salting the roads to melt the ice is no longer effective.

Also technically, the countries share a land border because the border as currently defined goes down the middle of the Nares Strait which manages to intersect some small islands located smack dab in the middle. Even more interesting is that this border is currently under dispute, with both countries claiming ownership of some of these small islands. See Hans Island for an example.

Exactly. A battery that's near the end of its useful life but not completely dead can register a decent voltage measured with a voltmeter, but a battery tester which puts a load on the battery (usually just a resistor in parallel) then measures the voltage will show the battery as nearly exhausted cell that it truly is. A lot of sensors like that I have seen recommend lithium batteries (the non-rechargeable type) as they will perform better for the short, high current draw situations when the sensor takes a reading. And I've generally found that is true.

They are called lithium batteries because they use lithium as the anode. Lithium is a metal, it's not a synonym for "rechargeable".

That's why you replace them when they go dead. Any decent alkaline battery isn't going to leak if you take it down to nothing so long as you don't let it sit for an extended period of time after doing that. Now, cheap Chinese shit batteries you buy at Harbor Freight might be a different story.

Alkaline batteries used to contain significant amounts of mercury in them which is why they wanted them recycled. Around the late 90's, they managed to remove almost all of the mercury, so now in many places it's considered acceptable to throw them away (but not all places, California still considers them hazardous waste). There really isn't anything in them that's terribly valuable so there's little interest in recycling them to recover the raw materials. So into the landfill they go.

The thing is that the free upgrade offer is only good for a year. Though some of the details are a bit murky if I take them up on it and change my mind. What if I wanted to go back to 7/8? What if I find some reason that I simply cannot run Windows 10, either because of hardware or some software package that won't run?

That could make things interesting, as there are other things that never made the transition to Media Foundation, such as the DirectShow interface to webcams (and other video devices). Might have to look into that.

Just create yourself a user.css file and change the colors to whatever you want. I've done this for years to change slashdot have light on dark text. Nowadays, you can even download extensions for popular browsers where someone else has done all the hard work for you for many popular sites.

Obviously the example is contrived, because we already know that eggs produce chicks and rocks do not. The difference between a rock and an egg is pretty obvious. However, you usually use statistics to measure things you don't know so much about, and trying to discern differences that are not as obvious. How do you know you're not making such a mistake? Or for that matter, someone purposely lying with statistics, presenting data, and hoping you don't know the difference between the eggs and the rocks in his/her experiment?