On second thought , let's not go to 4chan. 'Tis a silly place.

So on a lark I went to the Microsoft store web site and tried to find a few applications I knew would be useful in education - R, yEd and QGIS.

I gave up. I couldn't even find a friggin' search box.

What the hell, Microsoft? Why are they making it hard to search their own online store?!?

... until all of SF topples into the bay.

And there will be much rejoicing.

In honor of the great Bill Hicks, I propose we name the resulting scenic landscape Arizona Bay.

Actually, we do have street lights on the A60 - on the tunnel under Mainz-Hechtsheim. We also had one at the quarry in Mainz-Weisenau, but that isn't in active use any more, so they removed them.

But then, we're talking about Rheinland-Pfalz here. We're all kinds of crazy.

...state-threatening act of violence.

Unless the model plane is the size of a 747 or the explosive is anit-matter, how is that a "... state-threatening act of violence." Is Germany in such dire straits that a single model aircraft can topple a whole country?

They could shut down the BILD HQ for a day or two. Imagine that: Millions (no hyperbole, they sell about 2.5 million copies daily) of dumb people not being able to read the "truth" on the front page of their favourite tabloid and having to think for themselves! State-threatening indeed.

Steam's DRM scheme is called "Steamworks". Look for that in the description, I guess (Just guessing here since I don't use it or any other similar "service").

Y-Chromosome tied to your surname? Even assuming your culture has surnames in the first place, that assumption is so wrong in its generality it hurts. Patrilineal naming convention is just one of many, and for example patrinomic (where your surname is derived from your father's name, as in "Jon Olafsson, son of Olaf Magnusson") is also often in use - for example in Iceland or many Muslim countries.

Wow ... you can actually read Gizmodo (and related sites, I guess) without JavaScript now. Took them long enough.

If you are not a resident of the U.S., since Paul Ryan is running for Vice President (...)

See, that's all the info that needed to be in the starting sentence or the second one the latest - "running for vice president of the USA" (optionally for which side, but that's not that important really). Seriously, the story doesn't even have an "usa" tag or icon (it has the "wikipedia" icon), so how the hell should somebody from the outside guess?

It also makes the whole story a non-story. This happens with pretty much ever presidential candidate and people in their circles in those countries where this position matters. Francois Hollande's page (on the French Wikipedia) is still semi-locked, and the edit wars there didn't feature on Slashdot either. Pretty much the only exception I can think of in recent times is Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign.

If you don't know who Paul Ryan is, why do you care?

Your comment makes, from logical point of view, no sense

Exactly because I don't know who it is, I don't know if this is important enough for me to care. Google search brings up at least some actors and one(?) talk show host, one cinematographer, some politicians and a ton of other people by the same name - no wonder, it's a rather generic one. I guess he must be some politician in some country, given the context, but this still doesn't give me the nearly same info "Paul Ryan, proposed for the next free seat in Canada's highest court" or whatever would do without checking a bunch of results to see which one could match.

Would it kill the editors to write half a sentence about who the hell this "Paul Ryan" guy(?) is supposed to be?

"...as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity..."

Flight software? She flying back too?

"Flight" as in "fight-or-flight response". You know, in case Curiosity encounters Martian life which think it's delicious ... or at least interesting enough to study and take apart.

Those people at NASA think of everything ...

What would you do?

I'd grab a beer, start up the BBQ, prepare some T-Bones with some olive oil and some spices, and lay out in the sun.

Did I win?

Possibly the "balls of steel" award for doing that in the middle of winter. As mild as it might be at the moment, the evenings can get frosty. ;)

The thing is, even if the thread is empty and just meant to help another crime (extortion or worse), if only one person gets murdered, even in a totally unrelated act, and the police didn't say what they said, they'd face a public shitstorm. So they say what they say, put a person or two to try and track down the senders (which will likely fail), maybe set up a sting operation for them, and otherwise ignore the illusionary danger.