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.

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.

"Works for Me".

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.)

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.

* 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

That's why radar stations, or AWACS, can be targeted too. They are not offensive weapons in themselves, but they work as adjuncts to bombs, missiles, or guns.

Definitely a very good business model. I hope it works out.

The Australian health care system which is a mix of government-funded care for everybody, including the rich. And privately-funded healthcare for those that can afford more convenience.

Which means that everybody can receive free healthcare from doctors and hospitals. And your private health insurance can cut queue times for elective surgeries.

I made the point that my cardiac bypass surgery 19 years ago which entailed the surgery itself, the two days in ICU, and another 3-4 days in a private room cost me absolutely nothing 'out of pocket'. Total cost was of the order of about $120,000 which was borne both by the government-funded part of the healthcare system and also by my private health insurance.

Yes I paid for some of that, with a health-levy on my taxes, and my private insurance premiums which covered both my wife and me and cost (then) about $3000 per year.

Those US Officials should be asking other US (Intel) Officials.