And the remaining coal companies, in the ongoing war on coal MINERS, keep adding more automation.

I know that when you write about a war on coal miners, you're only being rhetorical, but that wasn't always so. Take a look at what happened a little over a century ago when mine owners tried to break up a miner's strike in southern Colorado and ended up with the Ludlow Massacre. That day's toll was 21 dead, mostly miners and their families, out of an estimated total of 69 to 199 people killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews declared it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States."

Bollocks. The "Linux desktop" been downhill since 2008 or so when GNOME 3 was introduced, creating a desktop that wasn't intuitive, didn't use CUA mechanics allowing easy discoverability by people who were familiar with Windows or Mac (...or Amiga or GEM or... etc... etc...), and was just plain awkward.

I take it, then, that the only Linux DEs you've tried are Gnome and Mate. There are others, you know, and some of them very easy to configure. When Gnome 3 was announced, I took a look at what it was going to be and was appalled. Not only was it hard to configure without third party addons that might stop working at any time, it needed more RAM that I had, and things like paying my bills and putting food on the table were more important than hardware upgrades. I took a quick look at KDE, and couldn't find anywhere on their website that told me what was so great about it, just "Try it, you'll love it!" and similar advocacy.

Then I found Xfce, and rapidly fell in love with it. Not only is it lightweight, it's highly configurable and easy to get it to look the way you want, especially if you add Compiz into the mix. Of course, Xfce isn't for everybody and it doesn't work, yet, with Wayland, but again, that's part of it's being lightweight. Personally, I use Fedora, and if you want to do things the easy way, Fedora has an Xfce spin that you can use to try it out, and if you like it, you can install from the LiveMedia.

If the people using copyrighted material to train their AI aren't making a profit, that will just make it less desirable for them to "borrow" other people's work without asking or paying royalties especially when you consider how much public domain text is out there and free to use.

That may have been their excuse, but I'd bet that the real reason was for correcting grammar and being right.

Yes indeed. I'm constantly appalled here by posts written by people who have (or at least imply that they have) at least one college degree and possibly more but write like a high-school dropout. Poor spelling, (Can't they use their computer's spelling checker?), misuse of it's and its, using the various forms of "their" seemingly at random, constant syntax errors and punctuation put in by guess work. Now I only have a high-school diploma and two years of college before I ended up in Uncle Sam's Navy, but at least I don't have to be ashamed of my writing skills. I only wonder what Henry Higgins would have to say about the writing standards here.

Maybe it was just rash and defensive locker room talk? Maybe you wanted to provoke a response for a conversation?

That wasn't some sort of BS trying to make an impression, it was the reaction you should expect from a soldier or sailor defending an Allie from an invasion. If you can't, or won't understand that, we can never have a meeting of the minds.

I notice your memories don't involve people. And you suggest it's easy to kill them.

The only reason I might be lonely here is would be that all of my friends live about 1,000 miles away now that my sister and I live in our retirement home in a different time zone, but oddly enough I don't feel lonely. And the reason the memories I listed don't involve people is that I don't know you, I don't know what kind of experiences you'd understand and decided to stick to the type of thing that would make sense to anybody reading this. As an example, I have many good memories from the time I spent as a seeing eye person for a diabetic genius who'd gone blind because of diabetic retinopathy and keeping him working at JPL as a computer programmer until he had to retire because of kidney failure. Would you understand why I like remembering getting three cheers every year at a LASFS meeting, first as a Patron Saint and now as a Sacred Object? As you can probably see, my best memories aren't exactly mainstream, but they are my memories and I cherish them. Now, why do you feel that you have to denigrate everything in my life trying to prove that you're better than me? And, as far as it being easy to kill people goes, stop putting words in my mouth.

Judging only by the other responses to your post, your experience with the VA was highly atypical. I'll add my own experiences to that, making yours even more of an outlier.

Some of the clinics at the Los Angeles VA facilities might not have the fastest service, but once you're seeing a doctor (or nurse practitioner) they're highly focused on giving you the best care possible, and that goes double for any facility I've been to in the New Mexico VA system where I get my care now. (I actually live in Colorado, just North of the state line, but the nearest clinic is about 20 miles away in NM, rather than 100 miles in CO.) And, they have a robust Community Care program so that you can get specialist care from a local practitioner at VA expense rather than having to drive several hours to the nearest specialist the VA has to offer. And, you can get your travel expenses reimbursed at a quite reasonable rate.

Now, that's a brief description of my experiences; please tell us yours and explain why you're so opposed to getting care at the VA.

So when you pulled the trigger or pressed the button or whatever it was. How did you know at that moment where the shell would land and who was under it?

Actually, the only time I got to push the button was during target practice in Hawaiian waters, where the target was an uninhabited island. Normally, I had nothing to do with that as my job had to do with a missile system. Still, I did get to fire what might be considered a huge machine gun (a 5"/54 naval rifle) as I got to fire "five rounds, rapid continuous."

You are old. It does not appear you have learned to love life. I hope you find some peace in this world before you leave it.

Yes, I'd call myself old at 76, and do, but I have many wonderful memories to cherish, such as watching both an annular and a total eclipse of the sun, seeing a lava fountain on the Big Island during an eruption from Honolulu, and seeing the Grand Canyon, Half Dome and Fishers Peak. What memories are you storing up for your Golden Years?

When businesses first started to use computers, what they were installing and using were mainframes, because that's what was available. Input was from punched cards or paper tape and output was mostly to magnetic tape or through line printers. (Anybody else here remember the "80 column mindset?") This had no effect on the mail room and only affected the typing pool by turning them into card punch operators. This changed, to some extent, when dumb terminals were developed, so that data entry operators could put data directly into the computer without needing to bother with punching cards. Of course, this also made things easier for programmers as well. Things like email and the changes it made on the mail room (and the number of people needed for that) only came with independent desktop computers and the Internet.

Another war you lost. With you sitting well away from the front line. Really brave of you, such courage bombing civilians, what do you call it collateral damage?

What the bloody hell are you talking about you blithering idiot? Shore bombardment has nothing to do with dropping bombs on civilians, it's ships using their guns against enemy troops and equipment. Before you come back and sneer at me again, take a moment to find out what I'm talking about instead of showing the world how much of an ignoramus you are. Oh, and about being well away from the front lines, we were close enough to be targeted by counter-battery twice, and the second time I got to watch 6" shells landing about 30 yards off the fantail.

Maybe you are traumatised. Or just evil.

And maybe you're an ignorant, narrow-minded schmuck. At the time I wrote about, the U:SN was helping ARVAN repel the Easter Offensive, an invasion of the south where the NVA got its ass kicked because it forgot that its eastern flank was totally controlled by a bunch of ships with big guns. And while you're at it, you might want to ask yourself why we went Over There not once but twice to rescue your sorry asses and what would have happened if we hadn't.

One reason that we're making little if any progress in Afghanistan is that we're not being heavy handed enough there. Remember, the Afganis don't really understand western style justice, but they do understand collective responsibility, meaning that they see nothing wrong with an entire village being punished for the misdeeds of one inhabitant of the village. Maybe they'd respect us more if we made another Grave pf the Hundred Heads. I'm sure all liberals would denounce us for our brutality and for a change, the conservatives would agree with them, but the people of Afghanistan would understand it and maybe even respect us a little more.

I'm surprised they even have fiber in Afghanistan.

Well, if they didn't I'd be wondering why they weren't in the middle of a vast epidemic of constipation.

I like your suggestion. It helps us eliminate the "activists" who are all talk and no action. Maybe we should be asking them how much they've spent on these projects so far this year.