It was sloped at every drive-in I went to - so you'd see over the canteen/projection room.

Half the fun was queueing for burgers, chips (fries), and/or pizza, and coke between the two features. The other half was sneaking beer in. Then the other half was...... what was I talking about?

The car radio thing only came in here (Oz) in their twilight years just as VCRs and VHS rental became a thing, but it was fabulous to hear a movie IN STEREO! with decent Bass.

Most of the ones that I used to frequent are now shopping centre carparks.

And in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and in the "The Great Escape"

Larry Niven's "Known Space" has quite a few machines, but they're generally not the point of the story. There's a lot more about how human and non-human species relate and interact, and how the machines affect their behaviour and choices.

The whole approach of Puppeteers (technically brilliant cowards) and Kzinti (foolishly rash but honourable risk-takers), taken against human approaches is well-written.

Of course, once you comprehend its size, the Ringworld itself overwhelms a lot of the rest of the stories 😲.

Niven's attitude to women and sex haven't aged well.........

But the stories are pretty good. He knows how to set multiple threads on their way and bind them up together at the end, or at least leave a decent cliff-hanger for a sequel.

Flowers for Algernon is an extraordinary piece of storytelling, without relying too much on "the machines"

There's a kind of magic to pinhole cameras. We made and used them in art class at school. Got me hooked on photography.

I find interesting that there's a lot of "might", "maybe" and "possible" when talking about rehabilitation, but not as much attention is paid to the "absolute" of another person's death. Possibilities and potentials won't bring that victim back to life.

Takes care of recidivism, though. But I wouldn't advocate it for that reason.

Someone who will commit murder at the age of 15 is very badly damaged, and will need a great deal of help to not be a danger to others in the future. That's the compassionate route.

Almost zero governments will want to spend the money. Sadly, it's cheaper to keep them locked up.

Nor is it helpful to cast Godwin so early........

There's a lot of music out there. Not all of it is available on Spotify.

And not all of us want Spotify applying algorithms to our listening choices. I like to be surprised at unexpected gems from artists I've never previously encountered.

I search www.live65.com for music in the genres I like. Blues, folk, world, deep breath adult contemporary (no, not the "decades" top 40s lists, more modern stuff)

I SHAVED MY BEARD FOR YOU, DEVIL WOMAN!

Or for a quick fix, use an equaliser to boost the 200-4000Hz frequencies. Put a slight suppression on anything higher and a lot of the music will be quieter.

Can you imagine the sheer frustration of trying to hear and appreciate the glorious dialogue of Deadwood were it subject to the poor standards of current productions?

Get Crazy (1983). Just a fun piece of silliness with a cameo from Lou Reed.

And Electric Larry

Pi-hole can block microsoft telemetry domains, just need to keep the blocklists up to date, and flush the Recall cache every day.

But you can feed a scrambled egg back to a chicken.

Last time I bought a Win 10 Pro DVD to install on a customer's machine, it was AUD$195.00. And I still had to use powershell to de-provision some of the bullshit. Better than the Home version (AUD$165.00), at least I can use GPEDIT to disable some "features".

Of course, a Windows licence on a pre-built Dell or HP would be a lot less.

"If you think this is expensive now, wait for 20 years" "Not a problem, I'll be retired by then, it'll be someone else's problem"

Not really - the current British royal house is german-descended. There are noble families in the UK with longer english/british pedigrees than the ~~Saxe-Coburg Gotha ~~ Windsor/Mountbatten family. But the current situation suits them better than rocking the boat.

What do you mean by "The British should be held accountable"?

Who, exactly? And how, exactly?

The monarch, the government, the entire population?

Reparations? If you sell everything - crown estates, crown jewels, all the art, everything - are you going to deliver $7.28 to every single person in a former colony?

How about we look forwards, instead? There's little to be gained in trying to make current-day nations pay reparations for things that their ancestors did.