I know you’re being sarcastic, but if does point out the fact that capitalism is only held in check by government. RockStar obviously waited until they knew they could get away with it given the current attitudes in all branches of the US government.

Yes. Sometimes you’re limited by the hardware you’re controlling. This code is a bit hard to justify with that excuse though. Normally your code would do a read from hardware to see if the value decremented and then repeat the write. (Possibly a sleep/yield in there if required.)

Are we asking questions that we already know the answer to? ;)

alt.syntax.tactical

The existential dread from the past is the same existential dread of today. We also do not know how things might turn out.