Staged publishing on Azure is limited to 5 slots, not 2. But you are correct, it doesn't scale out to 200 slots. However, in Azure, you pay for the first slot, the additional 4 are free, while the same isn't true in AWS.

As for SQL performance in Azure, I can't make an exact comparison, but you always have the option of running your own SQL server if you don't like the SQL Service. And even the cheapest Azure plan gets your point in time backup/restore, although the amount of time increase as you change service levels (basic - 7 days to premium - 35 days) and the cost of a P1 database is roughly half that of a single "db.m3.xlarge" instance on AWS ($465 vs $968.40), and the price gets worse from there. Multi-zoned databases on AWS are basically full cost, while on Azure (called GEO-replicas), they become cheaper. Then tack on some more if you care about provisioned IOPS (which comes free with Azure, as all tiers are allocated that way), and you've quickly turned up a huge bill for the same performance from Azure.

As for AWS RDS being the "full" version of SQL Server, I suppose that is true if you only need the functions in SQL Standard (Amazon doesn't offer enterprise). Unfortunately, we use features only available in enterprise (like being able to enlist indexed/materialized views in queries automatically), and AWS RDS service doesn't support that while Azure does -- so your "full" version is less "full" than than your "not-full" version of Azure's SQL service. Amazon's RDS is limited to 1 replica, vs 4 in Azure (we don't actually use this, yet) as well.

As for the "slammer" idea, that is quite funny, when the exact opposite would be true assuming there still exists vulnerabilities in the Service locator service. Azure likely doesn't use the same code, while AWS does, so they would be more likely to be hit than Azure *IF* another vulnerability exists, but good job bringing up a 13 year old irrelevant vulnerability into the discussion.

I might be mistaken, but according to what Amazon's description of RDS, they don't support read replicas of MSSQL.

You can with Azure. You can also run your own SQL server if you prefer that as well, and you can set up VPNs and wall off sections, and even use your own local SQL server for fault tolerance (or performance of other local processes). I haven't seen anything you mentioned that you can't do in Azure (minus perhaps having a direct connect to their azure cloud -- but I haven't checked into that eitehr). It's just more difficult to set up with AWS.

I found the exact opposite, but we are mostly a Microsoft shop. Working with Azure was dead simple, including setting up auto-scaling (Which wasn't offered by Amazon, at least when we were looking), so that our website scales up during peak times, and drops back down during the quieter times, automatically. It also ahs staged publishing which we use a lot, and the ability to switch our public website between any of the multiple slots INSTANTLY with no downtime is also a very big plus. Again, something we couldn't do with AWS at the time we looked.

Publishing directly from Visual Studio is nice (Not offered with AWS -- except via FTP which does a complete site upload instead of only differences).
Automatic SQL Backups and rollbacks to point in time is also dead simple in Azure, but I'm not sure it is even possible in AWS outside buying an enterprise SQL Server license and managing it yourself.

Everything else we looked at was either better at Azure or the same between the two with the exception of their CDN, which I found better at Amazon than Azure at the time. As that wasn't a requirement for us, it was a pretty simple choice (even though we have both Azure and AWS corporate accounts). Our other departments that are java & PHP based prefer AWS however.

And what exactly is the official language of the US? Before you answer, perhaps you should look it up.

I can't agree enough with this. How can this guy be expected to EVER master any (computer) language if he hasn't even mastered the basics of the English language after how many years? Computers change fast, and if you can't go from knowing nothing to being very very good in a language in a matter of a few months, you simply aren't very good.

To be fair, I think they got paid.

Our new AI overlords of course.

All Supreme Court judges fall under article iii, as do some district court judges, and I believe court of appeals judges. Lesser district court judges(magistrate judges), U.S. Tax court judges, and a few others are not.

I'd break each one of those companies up 2-4 times as well. Merge Comcast/TWC then break them up into 6-12 separate companies.

Perhaps you shouldn't be behind on your bill?

Area of the states taken from Wikipedia. Crop production taken from the respective state's agricultural departments.

California doesn't even come close to "grow[ing] most of the food in the country". The account for 13.2% of the food grown in the US. While that is good for a single state, it's falls far shy of "most". In fact, California, while nearly 3 times the size of Illinois in area, only generates slightly over twice the food. That seems a lot less impressive.

Not all federal judges are appointed for life. Some are, most aren't.

There are plenty of desktops with M.2 slots.

You are right. We can't get any large projects completed today. Not the International Space Station, a large hadron collider, or anything of that sort.