If your host doesn't allow multiple versions of PHP to be chosen at will, you have a shitty hosting company. I worked at a web host until recently - they were a shitty host but we still had PHP 5.2 through 5.5 available (inclusive). We may even have had older stuff available but I never got asked about it. And, this was on the shared servers. If you were on a dedicated server or VPS, you could of course run whatever version you want. We'd even install it for you if your devs weren't competent enough.

The NRA is essentially a gun lobbying organization with a side of hillbilly hunting club. The idiots running our country into the ground are politicians of all stripes. The biggest connection you can make between the two is sometimes NRA lobbyists might run into the people doing real damage in the halls of congress.

I presume you were trying to make some commentary on party affiliation of these groups, but I see you have provided nothing to that end. I'd like to hear you try, preferably with some kind of reasoning involved, not World-Cup-esque cheerleading.

You have a Blockbuster?

Until recently I drove a 1990 Dodge Shadow. Occasionally the engine would stall, and once this happened to me while going around a tight corner. Thankfully I was going slow and it was in an isolated area, but the sudden loss of power steering and brakes was kind of scary.

If power steering and brakes go out, you *can* still steer the car, but if someone who had never driven a non-power-steering car was in the situation I could easily see them freaking out and not being able to brake or turn. But what bothers me even more is, now I drive a 2008 Hyundai that has steering, brakes, and gas drive-by-wire. If the engine or electrical system goes out in this new car, will I be able to steer at all?

Maybe what you can draw from this is that every president will "act like a Republican". Then realize that when you say "Republican" you actually mean "Plutocratic", and that both of the parties are plutocratic. We have been conditioned to root for one team or the other like a sporting match - to divide us, distract us, and keep an illusion of choice. And, like a sporting match, both teams are fighting for the same objective.

The substances used in lethal injections aren't covered by patents. All the ones mentioned here are barbiturates, which were first synthesized in the 1800s, and started being used medically in 1903.

I'm sure the phenobarbital will come back to prisons somehow. It will probably involve the state having to bankroll production of the drug, which is why it hasn't happened instantly. Once the funding gets in place, a juicy contract will go out to a domestic drug manufacturer to produce the minute quantities of drug involved. It will cost a lot. There is near-zero medical use of barbiturates now, they've been all but banned, so there'll be only minute quantities needed. A normal dose of phenobarbital is measured in milligrams, even for executions I don't see the dose exceeding a couple of grams, since it's not actually the lethal agent in the mixture. 50 - 100 grams, a liberal estimate, is very low for annual production of a drug. The majority of the cost is going to be overhead.

If you asked me about a "real IP" I would ask for clarification too. Does that mean a static IP? Dynamic IP? An IP not behind any kind of NAT? Or simply any IP that exists here in the observable universe, opposed to an imaginary IP?

Do you expect to be able to get a developer on the phone immediately to fix a bug in a free service? Be glad that they do have someone manning the phones to point you in the right direction to where you have the best chance of getting this addressed. In most free software, even the open source model, the answer is "Code the bugfix yourself".

Jesus... sometimes this place is worse than the web hosting customers I deal with. "What do you mean the SSL expired? I didn't know it had to be renewed! Why wasn't I notified!!" "Sir, the certificates come with an expiration date the moment they're issued..."

The quote reads:
"The software is mathematically proven to be invulnerable..."
wait for it-
"...to large classes of attack."

Since he does say 'mathematically proven', probably he's referring to some cryptographic subsystem of the software, maybe even just the encryption algorithm itself. But whatever he is referring to, the statement is that it is invulnerable to some types of attack (not all types of attack). This is just standard propaganda designed to give the impression of "our forces are invincible!". In this case, the propaganda might even be factually correct, but the way it's phrased is designed to give people with poor reading comprehension the idea that the drones are invincible. Apparently, that is the meaning you took from it as well.

It's actually "Plastics." I don't know where this quote came from, other than I have heard it many many times playing Civilization V, but it's definitely in the plural.

Fecal transplant. (Real thing - being used to treat C. difficile and other antibiotic-resistant gut infections lately. I had a relative nearly die of C. diff, he was in the hospital for several months, then more weeks bedridden at home, being administered combination IV antibiotics, to no avail)

Believe it or not, there are variances in people's bodies that cause some to smell more and some less. Some of the variance is known to change with age (see 'Old Person Smell' on Wikipedia). I presume the rest of the variance is due to genetics, microbes like we are discussing here, or other unknown factors.

Some people obviously require a strict regimen of daily soaping, powdering, de-odorant, and re-odorant (perfumes etc) or they become grossly offensive. That does not necessarily mean he is the smelly guy in the office - just that he can become the smelly guy without the aforementioned mitigation efforts. So, in no way is this meant as a treatise against deodorant. Some people need it.
Some other people do not need to coat themselves in these products on a regular basis to stay inoffensive. For whatever reason they do not produce the same quantity and/or quality of odor. In a low-activity lifestyle these individuals may not need more than a daily water rinse, with occasional more thorough cleaning as-needed.

I'm also curious about your anecdote, was this gentleman aware of his odor? If so, how was he made aware? You mentioned a second opinion from an unbiased source, can you be more specific?

I dunno if you're serious or not, but if so, you must have an exceptional use case for jeans, or be getting knockoffs, or the crap jeans that come pre-torn. I currently have 3 pairs of Levi's that have been used in heavy rotation for the past 6 years. I almost never wear anything but those jeans - don't own much else and not subject to a dress code.

This is the current status of those jeans, after years of continuous usage:
Black pair - Still holding together, one leg has developed a fray in the knee. I consider this pair to be in the prime stage of its lifecycle.
Brown pair - The color is a bit dull but other than that it shows nearly zero sign of wear.
Blue pair - This one developed a full hole in the knee and it was decided to turn them into cutoffs. It should be noted this pair is several years older, circa 2005-06

All three are still in regular use several times a week. I wear them anywhere from 1 - 3 times (average probably 1.75) between washes.