Sorry... I was going for the joke and didn't pitch it very well. My actual views are more like yours.

As for the reality of the subject matter, I would borrow the concept of "probably approximately correct" from machine learning, and give it a 90-95% chance of being ~80% correct. (The 80% is lower to allow room for some more big discoveries like inflation.)

Unfortunately, people will be (hopefully) studying this for thousands of years on top of the <100 we have so far, and none of us will live to see how it turns out in the long term.

And I'm guessing that the publishers who use region codes cry like babies whenever governments impose artificial barriers to free trade.

I always heard it as: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

And of course, the word of choice usually wasn't "fool".

(Is this really a regional saying?)

New technology will come and add to it, that's a given. But do you really think throwing out what we used for ages is a good idea? Can you point me to a new input medium aside of keyboard and mouse that offers better control in a desktop environment? And no, I don't give a shit about how great the new crap works on tablets and phones. I want a DESKTOP operating system. If something else works better on a tablet, do something else on a tablet. Simple as that. Even Apple was smart enough to know that one size fits all works in operating systems about as well as it does with underwear.

Initially, maybe. When the first barns get flattened by M1s, including whatever is inside, the resistance should falter pretty quickly.

Now the state the US is in makes a lot more sense.

The problem with these "emergency modes" is that they run infinitely. With censorship and martial law in place, how would you know that it's time to get back to a normal mode of operation if the powers that are don't want to return to it?

You want to use regular military against your own population?

History is not on your side when it comes to the question of their loyalty.

That's something entirely different. Nuclear war has been planned again and again. Katrina and 9/11 were unplanned and had to be improvised. 9/11 was simply a total surprise and Katrina, well, while it was likely to happen and everyone knew it would, there was simply no money in preparing for it.

Where's the problem? Just ask nicely, they're Canadians!

When my Nexus 4 went tits up I bought a Moto G 2014. It's got an SD slot, it's got KitKat (now) and it's unlockable/rootable. Indeed, unlocked and rooted. It was under $200 with a ringke slim backing added, from Amazon. That was pretty compelling. I miss the GB of RAM but nothing else.

Ah, but what about that long period of running WfW at the office, except on servers and maybe CAD workstations and the like?

SSD

Seems like Microsoft can address this one of two ways. One, just don't do it to network drives, the OS knows which those are. Two, by now they ought to have been able to implement this in SMB or whatever it is called now, where the client just asks the server for the size of the directory so it doesn't have to do all the calls manually. The server can prioritize that stuff last.

Windows Server has long been the way to get the expert's version of NT. On occasion, though, it has had DirectX compatibility issues.

Are you aware that BMW and Mercedes reliability has gone into the toilet since the 1980s? I hear most Porsches that don't catch on fire spontaneously are pretty reliable, though.