g++ supports it with __restrict__. And if you're writing high performance code but not having support for the features of modern compilers, you're an idiot. In appropriate situations, the performance difference for using restrict or not is huge. Array-heavy tasks like image processing often get a 2-fold or more benefit with using restrict. There's very few places in the coding word where a single keyword can raise your performance that much.

Except for Windows and Office, I don't run Microsoft bloatware on my PC. Everything else is open source. I'm still running the same AMD quad-core system from seven years ago. No need to get on the hardware band wagon again.

And examples of these which could plausibly be on Titan are....?

There's not much in nature that's that light.

So you think massive yachts, ridiculous-priced art/jewelry purchases, palatial estates, gold-plated toilets and the like are a better use of money?

Trust me, I'd have a LOT more fun with a giant rocket than I would with a gold toilet.

I'll begin by stating that I I don't support such a mission, as I prefer robotic exploration. But this proposal isn't as extreme as it may sound - it's probably a heck of a lot easier than landing on a planet and taking off. It's only 640 m/s from earth escape to Venus (3/5ths that of Mars). Transit time is less and launch windows a lot more frequent. Venus offers very easy aerocapture. You don't have to deal with the randomness of the surface - your "landing" is a lot more forgiving. Your habitat is probably simpler, not having to deal with a surface (although there's a few potential complications that need to be studied, such as storms, and I don know the radiation level at the desired altitude). Keeping it aloft is easy - even normal earth air is a lifting gas on Venus. Solar energy arriving at Venus is double that of Earth. Nearly earth's gravity eliminates a lot of the uncertanties about skeletal and muscular wasting.

One of the neat things is that a person could potentially step outside without any sort of special suit, just an oxygen mask. It's a "maybe", though, as there's a few complicating factors. It's 37C (100F) at the same sort of heights that it's about 600mb; for US analogies, it's Phoenix temperatures at Mount Whitney air pressures (lower or higher for both, depending on your exact altitude - you can choose). So it's not a perfect match - but probably tolerable. But there's two potential complicating gases: SO2/sulfuric acid and carbon monoxide. Breathing them is right out, but even long-term (hours at a time) skin exposure might be problematic at the given concentrations; it's not certain whether at these altitudes they'd be prohibitive. They would however make eye protection a must at the very least, the eyes are more sensitive to both CO and SO2 than the skin.

Manned or not, the main advantage of a Venus blimp would be the lower altitude it would provide to scientific equipment versus satellites. So you'll get a lot more information on the atmosphere, which could help answer questions about Venus's evolution (and how other worlds in other systems might be). You'll get higher resolution radar imaging of the surface. You simplify to some extent sample return missions from the surface, as each sample collection doesn't have to be a self contained return mission. Etc.

One thing on Venus I'd love to see studied more is the super-reflective radar surfaces. It's now believed to be due to a "galena snow", snow made of shiny, electrically conductive lead sulfide. I'd really love to know more about the surface minerology of Venus in general.

That's what they said about Australia. A penal colony at Venus might work.

I saw one proposal of putting a manned space station in orbit on the far side of the moon and/or at L2 point (i.e., stable orbit outside lunar not facing the sun).

Away from the big, bad, scary alien.

If you read my other comments, you would have noticed that I admitted to being wrong and cited the exact Wikipedia link that you cited.

Which was why the Orion space capsule completed a 3,600-mile orbit to fly through the Van Allen radiation belt, as well as simulate a 20,000 MPH atmospheric return entry. With the exception of the Apollo missions, most manned flights were restricted to Low Earth Orbit.

I was misdiagnosed as being mentally retarded. Never mind that I consistently blew out the annual examinations on the genius side (i.e., these were "statistical flukes," as not the threaten the 3X funding I represented for the special ed classes). I graduated from the eight grade with fifth grade math/writing skills and a college-level reading comprehension. After skipping high school and teaching myself at home, I got an associate degree in general ed at the community college. A decade later I went back to school to learn computer programming while taking two classes per semester and working 60 hours per week for five years. I even made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major.

San Jose State University used to have a policy to automatically kick out students who fell below a certain grade point average in a semester (~5% of the student population). The university changed the policy when ~10% or more were at risk of being kicked out in the mid-1990's. That's a lot money that the university couldn't afford to kick out the door.

Everything I was taught about Christopher Columbus was wrong! Damn public school education!!

The shorter route to India was based on the presumption that the world was round. Prior to 1492, everyone knew the world was flat. Hence, Christopher Columbus' voyage was a pointless exercise.

Another proposal was to use Venus as a slingshot to Mars if the launch window for a direct Mars flight was ever missed. I find it fascinating that people always think of space flight as being outward (i.e., towards the outer planets) while ignoring Earth's sister world next door.