"Seem primarily financial in nature" is saying "money can cure any harm they suffer as a result of a stay not being granted." I tend to disagree with the court on this one because the current state of their industry means if you fall behind (which the reputational harm of "The DoD says we are a threat to national security" makes a real possibility) you're almost certainly going to be left behind. The hypothetical "we would have won the AI race and been a ten trillion dollar company" or whatever is a hypothetical the court will not entertain at the damages stage.

By "everyone" I assume you're referring to "conspiracy theorists?" Humans were there because the only thing that can actually secure an area are boots on the ground. The C-130s were there to bring the MH-6s. This is pretty simple, and in order to complicate it you have to really want it to be something else.

There was a time when the people who complained about soldered RAM (and I was one of those people) were a significant enough proportion of the community that manufacturers would pay attention. This was the age when gaming PCs were constructed from high end pieces from the wild-assed cases to the heavy duty PSUs to overclocked CPUs and next gen GPUs.

But overall, that segment of the consumer market has dwindled. Most folks just want to charge their new machine up, connect it to their WiFi network and get going. On the corporate end of things, save for pretty niche areas like engineering and R&D, a cube you can plug a keyboard, mouse and camera into and will last through a few upgrade cycles before it's sold back to a refurb outfit is all that is needed. Nobody in IT departments is pulling RAM chips anymore, particularly at RAM prices right now! Even the folks writing operating systems are starting to get it, and have rediscovered the glory of native apps that don't required bloated Javascript engines just to select a few radio buttons.

Yes, Windows 11 is really that bad. It's cluttered, slow, inconsistent. I've seen it on pretty high end hardware, and it's a dog. And that's before we even talk about how they tried to insert Copilot into everything. It's a shitty version of Windows and even Redmond acknowledges it. It was the impending EOL of Windows 10 that lead me to buy an M1 MacBook Pro, and I've never looked back. If I want to run Linux, I've got servers set up to do that kind of heavy lifting, but I have absolutely no need for whatever it is MS is trying to sell me these days.

Very true. Even just $100k in most of the country is more than enough to live very well.

You might take a paycut, but odds are good that you'll not only end up with more disposable income, but a much nicer home as well.

This is just plain not true. Microsoft has about 1/4 of the global cloud computing market and, if nothing else, the number of things that just use Entra for auth is insane. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, I'm just saying your claim that Microsoft is some kind of edge case in "internet service" is ridiculous.

Remember? We've been actively trying to forget.

We didn't know how good we had it. Now, we wish the absurdities were just April Fool's Day nonsense...

It is rare that I see something you post that I agree with, but words cannot express just how much I agree with the above. The GP really is a miserable fuck.

That's because I know better. You'll figure it out someday as well. It's a little surprising you haven't figured it out already.

I suspect you might know already, even if you don't want to admit it. That's why you're attacking me instead of addressing my claim.

There are other dangers to using AI far worse than just some shoddy code and sketchy documentation, such as cognitive atrophy and loss of brain plasticity, that should concern you as well.

There is also a growing body of evidence that calls the productivity gains into question. Is AI really worth the cost?

In short, Java was invented for a reason, and while it has become a victim of legacy cruft as well, the underlying concept of truly portable apps, with a minimum of fuss to jump from platform to platform, still ought to be the preferable path. The problem is that that true platform neutrality/ambiguity pretty much kills Microsoft in all but a few niches, like gaming, but only because hardware vendors put less effort into drivers for other operating systems.

Yes, Office is still king, although I think that crown is beginning to slip, and it may end up being Excel, with its large list of features, that may last the longest. But it isn't 1990, or even 2000 anymore. Developers have multiple ways of developing portable applications, and while MS may (for the nth time) update or swap out its toolchains, the real question is will developers really care?

Who was it who said that no documentation was better than incorrect documentation? Aside from you in the not-too-distant future, I mean.

Seriously, this is right up there with silly nonsense like "just have AI write the tests as well". It's like you hate your future self and want them to suffer.

Yes, I suppose you can tell it to do that ... it's just not something that it can actually do.

Is it really? Every AI fluffing article we've seen that makes those claims has, after even cursory examination, turned out to be complete horseshit. I suspect that, like most people who still have faith in magical AI, you're not paying too much attention to the output.

They could have created an endowment and then would not have had to worry when the money dried up, because the earnings on the principal would have funded them through the end of time. But, like most non-profits that end up with a bunch of money, they just used the opportunity for mission creep.

While it is an enormous problem, possibly the most significant, we know how to shield against radiation, but it's going to take mass in the form of hydrogen-rich molecules like water or polyethylene (as examples). To solve that problem we are either going to have to make launches a lot cheaper, or figure out how to do it all in orbit.

It's at the edge of our technological capacity to produce such a spacecraft now, so the barrier is economic. That's a massive barrier, but in theory we definitely could, if we put a significant percentage of GDP of the wealthiest nations towards the project, produce a spacecraft that keep astronauts alive and relatively protected from ionizing radiation both on the journey and while on Mars.

As to your general assholery, I guess everyone has to have an outlet, though why Slashdot is a bit mysterious.

Excuse you? The right to keep and bear arms ensures that the government does not have to equip the militia, the citizenry owns their own equipment. Many states required law that the citizenry own said equipment, the specifics of what the militiaman should be equipped with being enumerated in law.

The (federal) Militia Act of 1792 states "That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack."

But, sure, my premise is extremely flawed.

Coll story, but what does it have to do with whether or not a militia is "well regulated" or not? It really doesn't matter who was swanning around Michigan chasing Mormons, the only thing that does matter is whether or not they were well trained and equipped while doing so. That's what "well regulated" means. A "militia" can be a bunch of randos with a zip gun between the five of them led by a guy who lasted a week in basic before being sent home. A "well regulated militia" is an effective, disciplined, military force.

You've done nothing to refute either of the two points I made above, what am I pretending it means that it does not?