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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Anything that's useful as a weapon, or as an adjunct to a weapon, can be targeted.
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.
I answered this, the last time this article was submitted, yesterday.
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.
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.