72310,272 right here. ;-)

1TB? I remember when we put a 120 MB Maxtor full-height MFM drive in a customer's Novell file server in 1987. The drive was around $3000 in 1987 dollars IIRC, and we just gazed upon it in awe, not being able to imagine even coming close to filling it up. Nowadays, I don't even want to be bothered with 128GB flash drives that hold more than a thousand times more than that and cost less than lunch. It's just ridiculous now.

And to clarify, "miserable" can often mean "at serious risk for heatstroke". Sweating doesn't do a damn thing to cool you off when the humidity gets high enough, and if the power's out during the summer, it can get into the upper 90s inside in short order.

In contrast, it takes about 14 hours to get from Key West to Pensacola (one end of Florida to the other), also assuming no traffic holdups, and staying completely on big interstate highways. Not all states are that big, obviously, but given how backwater the U.S. is regarding mass transit, it's unfortunately something that a lot of folks need to consider.

They might be able to make a good case for constructive dismissal, but I agree that a lawyer should be consulted to better understand what the available options are.

A dead patient is no longer a source of revenue.

But their estate still can be.

I can't speak for others, but writing stuff down helps me a lot. When I was in school, I never studied before exams because I took copious notes, and the mere act of taking those notes made something click in my head to push that info into long-term memory and make it quickly available for later recall without ever having to look at the notes again. You're absolutely right about writing forcing you to organize your thoughts, but I suspect there are also other, possibly more subtle, benefits to be gained in the neurological and psychological realms.

Plus, the way a lot of modern cars are put together, it costs $750 in labor to disassemble/reassemble everything that needs to come apart just to get to the damned $40 part that needs replacing.

I actually used my phone as part of my HVAC system. The system has a Bluetooth service interface, so it was helpful to see if it had a clogged condensate line or other issue that I could take care of quickly. Unfortunately my login appears to not work anymore after an update, and I suspect the manufacturer has started cracking down to limit the use of the app by DIYers.

You don't even need to involve iCloud at all - you could include a printed TOTP secret that's associated with the device and will work with any TOTP app to generate a credential when needed, and don't be dumb enough to keep the secret anywhere on the device itself or in its bag/case. The pairing software will ask for a credential, and you give it when needed. Or you could provide the key as a YubiKey-like device, but that too would need to be kept separate from the phone/computer. Recyclers could pay a bonus for devices with a working key to encourage folks not to lose it.

This is just off the top of my head, and obviously the idea would need to be fleshed out, but the point is that there's no reason to make it a requirement that the manufacturer be involved anytime a device needs to be repaired while still maintaining a reasonable degree of anti-theft protection.

I think if you could sue the officers personally instead of making the taxpayers foot the bill we might see some changes.

Or just treat law enforcement like a lot of other professions, and make a current professional liability insurance policy a requirement to keep their LE certification. Eventually, the problem children will accrue enough claims to make them uninsurable, which also fixes the "resign and go to another agency" problem that's way too common. I too would prefer to see an end to qualified immunity as it currently exists, but the insurance angle would probably be easier to implement while remaining fairly effective in weeding out those who abuse their authority.

IBM got the GUI Workbench which became Presentation Manager

Do you mean Workbench as in the Amiga Workbench? Presentation Manager was nothing like Workbench, aside from using a window-centric paradigm, using a mouse, etc. Presentation Manager under OS/2 looked and behaved nothing at all like Workbench, and in the OS/2 1.3 release, PM was practically indistinguishable from the then-new Windows 3.0 unless you looked closely. I own three Amigas myself (a 1000, 500, and 1200), and spent a few years working on pre-Warp OS/2 code way back when, so I got pretty familiar with both systems.

I don't think OS/2 being successful would have automatically meant that MicroChannel would have gone anywhere. It was a great system at the time, and technically advanced, but the licensing fee they wanted for its use pretty much guaranteed that everyone bought an ISA-based 386 from Gateway, Dell, or Compaq instead of a Model 80, given that OS/2 ran just fine on those other machines. The only place I ever saw MC in use in the wild was in IBM shops where they were supporting a S/390 or something like that.

BYTE was the big dog for me, though. I miss that rag SO much.

For sure. When I was working on an OS/2 1.3 app back in the very, very early 90's, I needed a 386DX-33 system with 8 megabytes of RAM and a 120 meg disk. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the procurement/accounting folks was biblical in scope.