Only one geologist has been there and we've only got samples from a small number of locations, with not much of an idea about what is even a few inches beneath the surface.

Bit of a long time for the "great men" to be "on strike" isn't it?
Since it's set in the USA, IMHO, that book is a kick in the face for both democracy and capitalism. Somehow American society is so useless in Rand's eyes that only a small nobility can keep it going. That is the exact opposite of the reality of the wide road to prosperity in the 1940s and 50s when she wrote the book.
That book is not for you or me, it's for someone with a rich daddy that has brought them up to be ruthless and amoral.

Anyway, I think it's poison preying on the young and naive for a wide range of reasons and I've probably vented enough on that. I accept that you have a different view and that you probably do not see it as a deliberate kick in the face to a society that was built by people that actually did something instead of sitting on a throne issuing orders.

Sorry to post so much but the massive clue is about people of ability going away to come back after society has collapsed under the weight of socialism. That should remind you of something. Something from around 1917, and then wishful thinking about it collapsing soon after, which didn't happen in Rand's lifetime. The bit that gets me is all those Rand people of ability can be born to it without having to actually demonstrate it. It's a toxic message that is the antithesis of what modern society in the west is about.

I glanced at her biography and saw that not only had she lived in the US for many decades

FFS she was immersed in the bullshit factory of Hollywood and wouldn't have known a normal US workplace if it fell on her.

None of them share the radical viewpoint of Ayn Rand

That's my point, they are all heirs to George Washington instead of King George or the Tsar.
If you read stuff about or set in 19th century Russia before reading Rand it all stands out like dogs balls - especially little Princess Dagny.

Maybe you should write a book about such a parallel universe. I'm sure you could make it entertaining if you try.

You don't even have to go back as far as Rome. In the 1200s in England rich people were sometimes getting married in Churches because the Church had a nice big hall, then things went on from there. It was seen as a secular thing with a blessing on top if you could get it. It's still very much a secular thing in terms of property etc.
One problem we have, especially in the USA, is "fundamentalists" who see religion at the core of EVERYTHING. Anything connected with a Church in any way back when they turned up a century ago is especially a religious issue to them. I think we need a modern Luther to nail stuff on their doors to tell them to be as tolerant as the mainstream that let them exist in the first place.

Too bad it became more complicated and scientific

It started that way FFS. Seriously guys, how many PHP cut and paste dudes know assembly for a CPU, any CPU? Programming has got a lot LESS complicated and scientific over time, far less than when Grace Hopper was at the keyboard.

The Friday night fight designed to get those "Men's rights" types out from under their rocks and looking at whatever ads Dice puts up is late this week.

Yes I know some of the MRA types got that way from not being able to see their kids or something - rant at the courts and not some feminists who still can't get into a movie awards night without wearing high heels - go for the people with real power instead of the almost totally powerless.

who just opposed renewal of the Patriot Act ... by filibustering it at a crucial period prior to its renewal.

Not critical enough that such a delay achieved anything other than sending a message.
BTW, I completely agree with your text I cut out, but my point is that it's the actual votes against it that matter and various proceedural games are mostly pointless unless they influence that in some way.

I see the filibuster as a flaw in democracy (like the shutdown trick Cruz pulled) and not the person, despite my rants about an author that it turns out he wasn't named after, and disagreeing with some (but in no way all) of his policies. It's sad that he can't just vote against it and get media attention for that, but instead has to be a roadblock for ten hours to get the message out.

"Bootstrapped" implies it goes away instead of being an active layer handling memory management etc - so it's incorrect.
MSDOS stayed resident and was used by Win95 etc.

From the article:

Now, there are parts of MS-DOS that are unrelated to file I/O. For example, there are functions for allocating memory, parsing a string containing potential wildcards into FCB format, that sort of thing. Those functions were still handled by MS-DOS

So in terms of actually getting stuff done (eg. memory management) MSDOS was there to do it - thus for all practical purposes the Win32 was running on top of MSDOS. It wasn't "just a bootloader" as various people in this thread have been ranting about.

it's quite clear that everything is deliberately vague beyond the borders of the US

It's her ignorance of the USA, especially functioning capitalism and a functioning state with elected officials where she has such breathtaking ignorance. Atlas Shrugged could be renamed "Bring back the Tsar and his petty nobles to run the place", so much of it is about the horror of dirty little serfs like the science guy having positions of power.

And seriously, how is Rand supposed to have undermined democracy anyway?

Her aristocratic manifesto was taken seriously be far too many people who take it far more seriously than a shallow SF book should be.

I note that we in the US currently have a president who is the antithesis of anything Rand believed in,

If you pay attention you'll notice that they have ALL been that from George Washington onwards. IMHO that shows more about Rand's lack of understanding of the USA in the years when she wrote the novel than anything wrong with the United States.
It's a European novel about aristocracy (screwing their way to the top as jailbait no less), highly critical about egalitarian colonials like the people who built the United States and those who carry on inspired by them. It's had a LOT of influence on people who didn't know better and it's distorted their view of reality.
If you want to read something to defuse such shit try some Joseph Conrad - well written, lots of it is short, and he made sure he had a very deep understanding of the topics he wrote about. "Under Western Eyes" shows what Rand had to be afraid of in her earlier years and it's a pity she never wrote something like that instead of her big insult to the west "Atlas Shrugged".

"USA Freedom Act" - what evil manipulative piece of shit gave that name to a bill on communication monitoring?

I don't know where you got that from. It ran on an updated MSDOS with 32 bit capability (MSDOSv7) but it was still MSDOS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS