Was there ever a version where you could kill the dragon with your bare hands?

For example, Britain had a theory of radar by the late 1920s, radar itself in much of the 30s, and airborne radar by 1937.

Knowing the theory behind a new technology is all well and good, but more important is what you do with it and how you develop it. As an example, in late 1944, the IJN had shipboard radar on most, if not all of its capital ships and some of its smaller ones. This could show an enemy fleet as separate squadrons, but couldn't resolve those squadrons into individual ships and they were just beginning to experiment with using radar to aim their guns. The USN had radar on most, if not all of its fleet, it was sharp enough to show squadrons as individual ships and it was routine to use it at night for fire control, as the Japanese learned the hard way. I'm sure I could find other examples if I put my mind to it, but I think I've made my point clear.

And yet, here in Trinidad, CO, not only did we get some rain on the 30st, we got some snow as well. Yes, it all melted as soon as it landed because the ground was too warm, but that just meant that it sunk right into the ground instead of evaporating into the air.

The classic kind, with one button.

You mean like the one on Dagwood's shirt?

Because, that's what we're (y'know, the sheeple) are told!

And that's because Ubuntu is designed to be used by Windows refugees and wannabe geeks who like bragging that they're using Linux but aren't interested in learning how it works or how to do any system maintenance that can't be done in a point-and-drool gooey. And for those of you who think I'm being too harsh, or find my description striking too close to home, try this: go to the main Ubuntu forum with a simple problem on an Ubuntu box that's past EOL and see how they respond. Then, do the same thing with an EOL Fedora box at one of their forums. Guess which one will help you and which one won't.

A good question that deserves a good answer. Back in Biblical Times, Hebrew didn't need to use vowels because the language is so regular that if you know the language and its alphabet you know what the vowels are and where they go. Vowels were developed and put into use so that people who didn't know Hebrew very well could still know how to pronounce the words. And, there are many people today who only bother with the vowels if they expect what they're writing to be read by people like me who can read Hebrew out lout f(Thanks, phonics!) but don't know what the words mean.

Economic warfare is more effective than weapons in some cases.

Yes, indeed it can be, and a classic example is the Danegeld which the Danes used to drain the English out of all the funds they might have used to pay soldiers and defend the realm so that when the Danes really invaded, the English were powerless to resist them in any meaningful or effective way. Not that I think that this was the Dane's intent, they were just interested in getting as much silver as possible without risking their lives in a fight.

We're still pissed over not releasing all the epstein files.

Look: Epstein was tried and convicted in 2008, eighteen years ago, and he died in 2019, seven years ago. Nobody cares now except for you and your lunatic fringe cronies and the only thing that happens when you bring it up is that readers go on to the next post and ignore everything you wrote.

Another example of that is the Egyptian loan word, Pharaoh. If you were to look at it in the Book of Exodus in the original Hebrew, you'd see that it transliterates into Paro. Why it's not still pronounced that way in English is because when the Greeks translated it into Greek, in what's known as the Septuagint, they had two choices for the P sound, and the one they picked has gradually changed from a P to an F.

I'd love to use goats but they are really quite expensive.

Have you considered using sheep instead? I've read about them being used, but I don't know how expensive they are. And, if you do use goats, be careful about using them near fruit trees if you plan on harvesting the fruit because goats are very good tree climbers. As an example, I once ran across a short video of a goat working its way up a palm tree to get at the dates, so regular trees wouldn't be a bit of difficulty.

Maybe someone in the mid to late 80s (do those count as boomers or silent generation?).

My (older) sister is one of the last War Babies to be born, as she came into the world a bit more than a week before VE Day. And, I have a friend who claims to be one of the first legitimate War Babies having been born in November, '42. Both of them are in their 80s. And, our parents were both part of the Greatest Generation and my Father served in the US Army but never went overseas.

You missed my point: an unscrupulous company could use only one AI, trained in part on the software in question, to make a clone of it and claim falsely that they'd used a clean room to create their own version of the package.

That's not only possible, it's very likely to be implemented in the near future, if it hasn't been already. However, it's also very probable that there will be unscrupulous companies out there training one AI on OSS source code, using it to produce a clone of that package and claiming to have used that clean room technique. And when (not if) it happens, how will people tell the difference?

"No jokes, no filler, just facts."

AKA Sgt Joe Friday mode.

Stage 3 smog alerts were year-round when I was a kid in the 1980s.

And I remember what it was like in the '50s, when they banned home incinerators because they were believed to be what was causing smog. It didn't work, but they stayed banned, which was a Good Idea. Things like catalytic converters probably helped, but those expensive "boutique blends" of gas were most likely the key to cleaning up the air.