simonblack

We are almost certainly not alone according to laws of probability.

However .... The likelihood of ever meeting another set of intelligent creatures is highly unlikely, as the distances between the little islands of intelligence in the universe(s) are just too large to ever allow intelligent interchange of communication between them.

As an analogy, think of the various empires on earth a thousand or two years ago. The Aztecs never met Egyptians because they just couldn't span those "impossibly large" Earthly distances for that era.

But whereas humans managed to go faster and faster on Earth to Egyptians to meet Americans, the Speed of Light is a barrier to us meeting the inhabitants of the nearest island of intelligence to Earth even if it's only a couple of hundred light-years away.

Sour grapes, Paul.

I didn't see the US's huge trade surpluses from 1940 to 1980 being a huge problem. Especially when one out of every two motor vehicles was being built in the US.

You have to hope your insurance claim is higher than (or at least as high as) your mortgage payout cost.

Samsung 43" 4K (Width:3840 Height:2160 Depth:24bpp) smart TV fed via HDMI

"Works for Me".

Can you pay me what I want?

I think that "U.S. Technology Rules" is not correct.

Taiwan's microchip technology is better than the US's.

Several countries have hypersonic missile technology that's better.

China's space technology is better at present than the US's. (The current US space technology level is a far cry from the Apollo era of the 1960s-1970s.)

And the main reason for Europe's decline is the loss of cheap energy from Russia after 2022. If you can't compete price-wise, you go out of business. When your manufacturing companies go out of business, the country gets de-industrialised. That was a completely self-inflicted disaster. The US didn't stop importing important commodities from Russia in 2022, while Europe did. (A very dumb decision on Europe's part.)

I got a new, better, improved wife out of mine. And I became a better person overall.

Also 47 seems a bit high. Women go through a midlife crisis around 35-38 years old, men tend to have theirs in the early 40s.

Latest fad terminology. Up there with "User Friendly"* or "Fuzzy Logic" as meaningless waffle by Sales droids.

* Somebody on the Net said of 'User Friendly' that it could be replaced by 'Lemon Scented' with no loss of meaning whatsoever. "Powered by AI" is no different.

Operating systems didn't have the large memory space which is necessary to do that. The maximum RAM with 16 bits is only 64K. Bank switching chunks of RAM in and out of that 64K can give you a little more, but the compromise is that the bank-switching code takes up RAM too.

In the 8-bit universe the CP/M OS took up somewhere around 6 - 8 KILObytes. My earliest DOS (North Star DOS) took up 0A00 H bytes (a mere 2560 bytes!)

The hardest thing in coming to Unix/Linux from the DOS world was that hardware is out of bounds for direct-access. You have to work with a hardware driver and the OS.

Stack Overflow has been bad for a decade or more. Of course it's dying. When people don't get answers they go elsewhere. When enough have gone elsewhere there is no one left to keep the website alive.

I never go to Stack Overflow by choice unless specifically directed there via Google.

NASA is broke. There is no funding.

No way can NASA get to the Moon, much less Mars.

The era when NASA could get guys to the Moon and back is gone. It will never come back.

Sad but true.

It depends on the couple. My first marriage was not a happy one. My second marriage was a happy one.

Yes it would be. At first.

Probably as good as it was for German armaments manufacturers pre-1945.

That China war might have been winnable if it had been started by 2020. Now, probably not.

Very. Compare the height of Everest to the size of the Earth and it's an exceedingly small difference. Probably like the thickness of a film of paint on a baseball.

Which bit?

The code without braces, or adding braces to debraced code?

For me the debraced code is very ugly. And there is a reason why indented code went out of fashion in the 70s in favor of freeform.

As years go by some new guy thinks he has invented something new and wonderful, but that 'something new' is very often something that was tried before and was found wanting.