Turbo Pascal became insanely popular on single-tasking systems because it was much easier to use.

Many aspiring programmers were ruined by precisely this ease of use, getting into the habit of massaging compiler complaints out of their code base with their fingers instead of their brains.

In C, if your compiler complains about an unsafe comparison between signed and unsigned, one can eliminate that complaint pretty quickly by tossing in a cast operator. Eliminating a braino ... not so fast.

GUI-facing code often benefited from the rapid turn-around cycle of a "turbo" IDE, whereas algorithmic code typically didn't.

NVIDIA has also demonstrated more commitment to capturing GPGPU business than AMD.

FTFY.

Once captured, twice cry.

Unless they intend to get forgiveness... or default. I am not sure that Greece is "too big to fail" where they can do that.

It is. EU is not a nation, it's a collection of nations, and "European identity" is weak at best. Anti-EU movements are already growing, and won't have any trouble taking power if it starts to look like EU is a threat to the nations people actually identity with.

This certainly explains the observed tendency of economies to collapse randomly no matter how they're run.

However, unlike in game economies, decisions in real economies affect people in addition to economy. Even if austerity actually was a cure to euro's problems, it cannot continue without destroying EU itself. People aren't going to tolerate endless misery just to boost some number, no matter how necessary politicians (who don't share the misery) deem it.

Either EU gets euro to work without austerity, or it has to abandon it. Demanding sacrifices from the common people who's reward is having less say in their own local affairs is quickly discrediting the entire union.

OK, I see what you're saying. That there's really little reason for the operating system on a home computer to look and work exactly like the one at work.

I agree. I think as computer users, we're mature enough not to need this level of familiarity. This is one reason that at some point down the road, I hope to be able to use both Windows for my digital audio workstation in my home studio, and some form of "SteamOS" for playing games. Of course, with companies like EA/Origin and Ubisoft using their own game store platforms, I don't see all PC games being compatible with a SteamOS for some time to come.

I see people who act like mindless robots when it comes to politics,

"Act like mindless robots" is a bit vague. Can you detail what it entails and how you've studied it?

You did actually study the reasoning behind political behaviour and not just conclude that because your candidate lost, people must be idiots?

fail to understand mathematics, believe in magical sky daddies for which there is no evidence,

People typically hold metaphysical positions based on personal subjective experience and channel these through whatever cultural imagery is available. Obnoxious as the result can be, the strawman of "magical sky fairy" has nothing to do with it.

and do all sorts of other tremendously illogical and irrational things despite the education we attempt to give them; that makes me conclude that most people are hopeless.

Illogical, such as jumping to conclusions the evidence does not warrant? Given the rather obviously non-sequiter nature of ("There exist education that isn't working, therefore no education can") I can only assume you're holding it for irrational reasons, such as egomania.

Trying to psychoanalyze other people over the Internet just makes you look like an idiot in my eyes. It isn't even relevant to the conversation.

...This one's so obvious I'm not even going to bother.

The GRACE mission has been doing it for a few years now, tiny fluctuations in gravity can be inferred by the change in distance between the two probes. However it's not a geostationary orbit, just one probe following the other in low orbit. Personally I think it's a genius idea to turn the problem of keeping two probes in sync into a highly accurate gravity probe.

There were plenty of kids who knew how to write "10 PRINT FART; 20 GOTO 10" or who typed in listings from magazines, and I agree that programming at that level is probably accessible to most people - but you can't equate that level of programming with modern software development.

But you also can't equate being able to read and write these comments - or baking instructions, street signs, or whatever - with writing "War and Peace", "The Lord of the Rings" or $your_favourite_book. "Modern software development" has very little to do with being able to quickly piece together a script to, say, unzipping all the archives in a directory to subdirectories named after themselves, or parsing a file, or customizing a web page with Greasemonkey, or whatever.

Any interface that isn't Turing complete is going to lead users wasting their time doing the same mechanical thing over and over and over again. And any that is, is programming by definition.

Coding is a job description, and an increasingly blue collar one like plumber or electrician at that.

Programming large systems is a job description. Ability to make small scripts and macros is an utility skill. Everyone needs to know how to unclog a toilet or change a lightbulb without frying themselves, even if they aren't electricians.

This whole push by giant corporations to get into schools (!) is simply a means for them to reduce future worker salaries and ensure a steady supply of bright young idiots all fresh'n'ready to be abused and burned out.

As opposed to being useless and thus unemployable. Let's face it: the kids are screwed.

Even in Finance, they've done that. Look at PayPal. The only reason that it exists is that the banks and credit card companies dragged their feet with online payments. They're now doing free electronic person-to-person transfers, but it's still expensive to take credit card payments online.

Exactly. Go back a couple of hundred years and you even have well-off people saying 'I don't need to learn to write, I can afford to hire a scribe'. You had people saying 'not everyone needs to learn to read and write, there aren't enough jobs for that many scribes anyway'.

Before he retired, my stepfather was the head groundskeeper on a golf course. Not exactly the kind of job you think of as requiring coding skills. Except that they had a computerised irrigation system that could trigger sprinklers in response to various events (humidity sensors, motion sensors, time, and so on). It came with a partly-graphical domain-specific programming language for controlling it. It's going to be very hard in the next 50 years to find a job that doesn't require some programming to do it competently - even this kind of stereotypically low-tech job requires it now.

I used to pirate games and I used to buy games. I eventually couldn't be bothered with pirating and worrying about malware or with trying to jump through the hoops that the publishers wanted, so I stopped playing games altogether. Then gog.com launched and sold me games that I was nostalgic about, cheaply. Then they started selling newer games. I spent more with them last six months than I did on total on games in the five years since Steam was launched and the industry wend DRM-happy. I can download DRM-free installers for all of the games, often in OS X, Windows, and Linux versions.

It turns out that there's another answer to piracy that works: sell your product in a way that's easy to use at a reasonable price. Stop worrying about pirates and start worrying about customers. Someone who wouldn't buy your game anyway who pirates it is not a lost sale, but someone who can't be bothered to put up with your treating them like a criminal and so doesn't buy from you is. Buying a game from gog.com is easier than pirating and, if you factor in the cost of your time, probably cheaper as well.

Give me a product I want for a reasonable price and I will happily hand over my money, because I feel that I'm getting something valuable in return. Don't, and... well, computer games are not the only form of entertainment available.

I'd also like to plug the FFII for anyone in Europe. They have a few MEPs among their members and have had some important successes. Less relevant in this particular issue, but they have a lot of overlap with the EFF in other places.