I suggest you read up on the actions of MENTOR 4, launched in 2009, and the satellite that it replaced, MENTOR 2, before claiming that Im "full of shit".
https://www.thespacereview.com...
At what point did actually being able to have a reasonable discussion about things end, and jumping to insults and vitriol become the norm? Why did you feel that you had to immediately be abusive in your response, rather than ask for more details and
Why in the holy fuck is a judicial position at all an elected one?
These officials should be following the law, not following the whimsical needs of an electorate. There is no way anyone from the lowest police officer to the highest judge should be held to an electorates position on anything.
The electorate should be able to vote the people in to change the laws, they shouldnt be able to vote people in who enforce the laws. Enforcement of the law should be entirely blind - if the electorate want a law to not be enforced, they need the law changed.
Yes its a clickbait title.
The US also does this - check out the Orion/Mentor satellites, or the JUMPSEAT satellites. Public astronomers have tracked satellites launched by US launchers moving into position behind other countries communications satellites, where they can capture the overspill of the transmissions sent to those satellites - they have huge dishes for just that purpose.
But oh noes, Russia or China is doing it, must call them out on it!!
As long as they don't make the rest of us look bad.
I treat everything I type into a computer that way. I always have and always will. Back in the 80s I figured I would never put anything online that I wouldn't want my mother to read.
Why isnt it already being done is a good question...
NZ already has it in place for public transport in most major cities, and the emergency services are switching over from a legacy system to using the same priority system for emergency vehicles as is currently used for public transport.
There is no job in the world that involves the word "swarm" that can be managed competently and intelligently unless it's being done by literal insects.
... and all that stuff could be probably fixed with a few registry changes.
Like George Carlin said, it's big club and we ain't in it.
That reminds me of when Microsoft acquired Skype and it almost immediately got much worse. Teams is another low-effort product that they presumably acquired from another company because Microsoft doesn't make software any more, they just buy products and then make them worse. I just sat through another meeting yesterday where we struggled to get audio working for about a half-hour. Even when you do get it working right, one day it will simply decide to change all your audio devices, leaving you scrambling to get sound working, because of course you only find out when you need to use it for a meeting.
Even the text chat is unreasonably buggy.
This started 20 years ago when they tried making all their UI work like web pages, something nobody asked for or liked.
Eventually, like you said, everything became an instance of Chrome. Even their popular programmer editor, VS Code (worst name ever) is basically a web browser underneath, and I _like_ VS Code. I used Multi-edit for about 30 years, only abandoning it for SublimeText in 2019, and then to VS Code in 2020 because that was all I was allowed to use at work. But, VS Code, despite being pretty bloated, is a pretty powerful and customizable tool that becomes a full-blown IDE without much effort. In fact, it can replace Visual Studio for a lot of development work. So Microsoft can still do something well, even if they don't do it in the best way.
But Windows itself is suffering from enshittification at an increasing rate, as nothing Microsoft changes is ever for the sake of the user, but for their own sake. Just look at the hopelessly misnamed "Modern" UI they came out with for Windows 8, where they looked with unfettered avarice at Apple's 30% of cut of every app sold and decided to completely tank their usability and saddle users with a barely functional app store with awful, subpar apps to try to force us all into an Apple-style walled garden just to get that slice of every sale. How'd that work for, Microsoft? Is there a person on the planet that didn't see this failure coming a light-year away?
And don't get me started on "Flat UI", the long decomposed goat spew remains of the Modern UI which still inflicts Windows, making it much worse visually and much more confusing because they punted on all the HCI expertise they developed in the 80s along with companies like IBM and handed all their UI/UX work to a bunch of art-school dropouts who never saw an Apple UI element they wouldn't copy badly.
And since Windows 11, I've started experiencing total system lockups, something that didn't happen to me with Windows 10, or if it did, it was so rare I don't remember. Microsoft stopped caring a long time ago, and now they are actively contemptuous of Windows users, as if they are resentful that they have to keep Windows going, because they clearly don't like working on it any more.
And now they are shoving AI into every crevice possible, although pretty much every company is doing that, so they aren't alone. I can't wait until the AI bubble pops, and the functionality gets distilled down to only those places where it truly provides value, instead just being the 20s version of Clippy.
Aside from some bug fixes, almost nothing Microsoft has done to Windows in the last 10 years has been for the users' benefit, but for their own benefit.
Every knowledgeable and tech-savvy Windows user just wants Windows 7 back.
When I bought a new laptop that came with Vista, I _paid_ for an XP license so I could go back to that.
I upgraded to Windows 11 around the end-of-life deadline. Things were mostly the same (I've been using OpenShell for a long, long time), although my machine (and my new Windows 11 work machine) have been locking up on me occasionally, something I don't recall happening with Windows 10, or if it did, it was much rarer.
Putting a stake in the ground for the end-of-life for a version of your OS is reasonable thing to do. What's not reasonable is when the successive version is worse, and no one wants it. Windows biggest competitor has always been the previous version of Windows. After 40 years, Microsoft should have realized why.
Some new versions of Windows were improvements over all, but the last one for which that was true was Windows 7 (and before that was XP), and it's probably the last one that will ever feel like an overall improvement. Some things are definitely better in Windows 11, but they are very few.
How fast did Windows 10 hit the one billion mark after Windows 7 went off support? That's the real comparison.
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint." -- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
