In America they call bribes "tips", government workers are not allowed to accept tips, however failing to tip a waiter will get you a spit burger. In India you need to tip every clerk and mail boy in the paper handling chain if you want your government paperwork to move. In Nigeria they put you in an interview room at the airport and wait until you figure out how much they want.

Nicely done. That kind of self-loathing crap is always irritating to come across.

I never once said anything about myself. You may wish to examine your biases, the errors in interpretation they cause and whether these errors make you significantly less effective at achieving whatever goals you have.

First, us humans prefer killing each other to science. This is a proven fact.

Really? How did the arrangements for that experience go? Subject gets to choose between a test tube or a bound assistant and a (hopefully fake) knife?

Second, humanity did not go from Horses to Nukes, a very very small percent of the population did it, those geniuses have everyone else standing on their coat-tails.

A small part of the population did experiments on uranium, while the rest mined that uranium, enriched it, built the roads that carried it from the mine to the lab, etc. Accusing a tailor of riding on the coattails he made is rather absurd.

The next leap will be by a very small group that is significantly more enlightened than the rest of the 99.95% of the population. If those people are benevolent, then everyone enjoys the fruits. If they are not....... Well, things can go very differently.

The invention to trigger the next leap will be by some group that is supported by others, allowing them to focus on something besides where their next meal will come from. After it has been made, it will be turned into something actually usable by other people, manufactured by yet others, distributed by yet other people along communication and transfer infrastructure built by, you guessed it, other people...

Heroic fantasies are just that: fantasies.

WE do not glorify learning, but instead glorify morons that can carry a ball, or can sing a tune. And we Vilify in society those that do love learning and are very smart.

People respect people who can provide something useful, be it entertainment, a focus for a cultural bonding event, or a cure for cancer. If you aren't respected as much as you think you deserve, it's usually because you aren't doing anything to earn it. Merely being smart and learned is no more worthy of respect than being richr; it's what you're doing with it that earns - or doesn't - the respect.

Honestly Humanity is a joke, almost a cancer. And if an advanced civilization stumbled across us, they would probably wipe us out to make the rest of the universe safer. We as a species love to hate others, we love murder, war, and control. WE thrive on hating those that are different or think or worship different.

Humans, in general, love thinking they're better than someone else, since that's easier than self-improvement. Sometimes that manifests as merely dismissing the entire species as "riding on the coattails" of a special few ubermenschen, and sometimes the delusion reaches the point of wanting to get rid of some specific group of perceived parasites. Either way, it's bullshit.

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.