I wonder how many more missions that run 10 times the expected lifetime NASA has to do before certain people give up on the whole "only private companies can do anything right" thing.

Uh, you don't know many software engineers, do you? The latter is pretty close to what "I'll do my best" means. Though instead of working to spec, it usually involves demonstrating that the idea was never feasible to begin with.

The term "gridlock" has nothing to do with the electrical grid (nor, of course, does it have anything to do with regular insufficient capacity like the article is talking about). Gridlock is a specific kind of traffic congestion that happens mostly in cities with a grid layout for streets (hence the term). Cars can't get through intersection A because it's blocked by cars who can't get through intersection B (which is one block down from intersection A). Intersection B is blocked by cars who can't through intersection C, intersection C is blocked by cars who can't through intersection D, and intersection D is blocked by cars who can't get through intersection A. No more than a couple cars at a time can get through any these four intersections, so even if there's enough clear space beyond the intersections, it takes far longer to resolve the gridlock than it would take to resolve regular traffic congestion of the same volume.

How much are you paying? If it's a more expensive plan, $3/month isn't much more than normal inflation. Even if you're paying $50/month, an increase of $3/month is still right around what inflation has been the past couple years.

Speak for yourself.

The first book was published in 1997. Kids who were the target age at the time are now almost 40.

The layer of ice was thick enough to significantly compress the crust.

For the compiler/parser, I doubt there's any technical advantage. As for programmers, anyone who complains about enforced indentation clearly has never had the misfortune of dealing with code without consistent and correct indentation. If having indentation define code blocks changes how your code looks at all, you would be Doing It Wrong without it.

It is. One of the good things you learn as a web developer is the importance of separating presentation style from the underlying information.