"The good news is, the school bully can steal your lunch money only once today."

Oh, well, that makes it perfectly okay, then. *eyeroll*

I don't live in a basement. But I am concerned about being held liable for what others do with my connection.

It's a fair question in the context of Mazdas. It is a much less clear answer in the context of should I buy a F-16 for $100 million that gets me a 20% chance of being shot down in an engagement vs. a F-35 that gives me a 5% chance of being shot down for $350 million.

There are plenty of reasons, good and bad. I'll assume you are asking a serious question, and give you the short version of the most often cited answers:

Good reasons include:

• It's stealthy(ish), and has an Active Electronically Scanned Array radar . Part of the idea is that you can see the other guy but they can't see you, so you have blown them out of the sky at BVR (Beyond Visual Range) and never had to get to the point of a dogfight.
• It's supposed to replace a bunch of different fighters and attack aircraft among the services' current fleets with a single airframe. Better QC, cheaper spare parts, buying in bulk, yadda yadda. The different models for the Air Force (F-35A), Navy (F-35C) and Marines (F-35B) turned out to be more different than expected, but that at least was the idea.
• America's allies wanted access to a fifth-generation fighter for their own militaries - which they weren't going to build on their own - and if the US didn't build a relatively affordable one (we weren't going to sell anyone the F-22 since it's our trump card for air superiority) they were going to have to buy them from Russia or China.

Debatable reasons include:

• It - like the military itself - is kind of a Federal jobs program. If you keep your existing jets and don't build new ones, then you lose the employees with the skills and experience needed to do the job. (Kind of like we may not be able to build new nuclear weapons if we wanted them because we haven't made them for so long and everyone with any experience has retired.)

Bad reasons include:

• The military and its defense contractors need new weapons programs to work on in order to justify their careers and existence (military procurement officers) and make money (contractors). Both groups have strong influence in congress, not least because of all the jobs they support (see above).
• The F-35 was intended to revolutionize weapons system procurements by using a strategy of "concurrency" - think of it like agile vs. waterfall development. The idea was better stuff, quicker and cheaper. It turned out - like some of the lessons Boeing learned with the 787 - that agile development may work great at Facebook but it's a train wreck when applied to aerospace, military systems and gigantic procurements. Oops.

There were also plenty of f***ups in assumptions the program made that were only really recognizable in hindsight, like the fact that trying to mesh the Marines' requirement for a V/STOL aircraft with the traditional designs for the Air Force and Navy hobbled the plane's performance for all three constituencies.

I know a lot of people are very critical of the F-35, and rightfully should be. But it's not as bad as it may sound - I think it will eventually turn into a decent (but never great) aircraft with a long service life. It's out there flying around today, but will take probably 10 more years to get to where everyone hoped it would be in terms of capabilities. Nonetheless, you will almost certainly still see F-35s flying around under US colors in 2050, so in the long run it will work out OK.

You must not ever have been to Chicago.

That is one of the silliest things I've read in quite some time. Unless you were going for Funny, in which case it's not. Thanks!

You've never experienced the touch of a woman other than your mother, have you?

Whether or not you approve of the über-casual dress code, that's still not a very nice thing to say about your co-workers.

When modern computers are on but idle, they consume a tiny amount of power. Remember the "Energy Star" campaign of the 90s? Yeah, we've had 20 years of advancements in that arena.

We all appreciate your yearning for a dark, cold, miserable life for the rest of us, though. Certainly, tax the fuck out of us some more, God knows we all have plenty of financial cushion for this kind of thing.

Really? Do you actually know Microsoft's track record and what they did? They singlehandedly held back the progress of computers, year after year, with disgusting, unethical tactics. That kind of reputation doesn't wear off easily. Are you one of the pro-MS consultants paid to post on sites like these? If so, good move posting anonymously so it can't be tracked back to you. If not, why are you writing about a mega-billion dollar corporation that can defend itself quite well?

That's right--they're professionals who are coding what they get told to code.

I must have missed that. My Bing-fu is a bit weak at the moment--perhaps you can post a link to a news article or something showing me when they started being reputable?

ProTip: If you didn't spend so much time trying to show us what a small-minded jerk you're capable of being, and actually paid attention to what you're responding to, you'd look a lot less stupid.

The Atari was the best seller of an entire generation of consoles. It was enjoyed by millions and envied by millions more. Where'd you get the idea that people back then thought video games were dumb? This is backwards thinking, isn't it? Applying the standards of today to a time when different standards were in force.

You are not Hammurabi, and you do not get to choose who lives and who dies. I hope.