Sorry to tell you, but you and I are about the only two people in the world to believe this. I use gEDA, BTW, which is another free-as-in-speech alternative to KiCAD, and much older. So far, I have been very frustrated trying to make the case that open hardware designs need to be "elephants all the way down" -- FOSS from the hardware design, to the DA tools (and file formats and libraries), to the OS. In fact, I once had a several-post-long exchange with Limor Fried over at AdaFruit's forums where she finally closed off the thread with: "Tools don't matter." I think her opinion is outrageously misguided and short-sighted, but that is an example of what the leaders of the Open Hardware community are thinking. SparkFun must feel the same way, because all of their designs are released on cripple-ware tools, too.

I think we need an open hardware license that includes a clause about openly documented file formats at the very least, and I would push for a license that calls for design files released on open source DA tools. Imagine where the Linux ecosystem would be today without gcc. Gcc isn't a great compiler, but it is open source, and it got us where we are today.

Tuxracer and xbill don't count as games anymore

Yeah, well I have made a killing in ADM stock and High Fructose Corn Syrup. Tell me you don't love it.

For comparison, fluvial landforms of the Atacama have been exposed for about ~23 million years. Channels on Mars have been exposed for 3.5 billion, a huge difference (150x by my count). Even a weak erosive force can accomplish a lot in that time. In that time wind erosion has almost entirely excavated Gale Crater to a depth of more than 5km, leaving Mount Sharp behind at a similar height.

He's a lying socialist, who puts the interests of indolent immigrants above the rights American citizens and the rule of law. But I knew that already. Let's take an honest slashdot pol. How many of you a$$holes voted for him? Thought so. What did you expect?

They could re-use all the things they said in North Carolina, when passing legislation requiring coastal development planning to ignore sea level rises.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/north...

Good. Nice to see government employees muzzled for a change. Climate change is a fraud.

Just use Scheme. The syntax is trivial, it is interpreted and you can be teaching concepts right away. And the rabbit hole goes as deep as you want. I've been using Scheme for 20 years and have still not fully plumbed its depths. It is an amazing language.

In addition, those western flanks show solid evidence of past glaciers

I know of no instance on earth where glacial ice fills lava tubes. Lava tubes are fragile. Glaciers are very destructive. What plausible process exists where ice will non-destructively fill lava tubes? Earth has thousands of volcanoes and lots of glaciation. Mars has neither. This is a ridiculous statement even for slashdot. The Indian Mars images are impressive, for 1970.

The approach trajectory was particularly cunning considering that there was an outage of Dawn's ion thruster.

I am all for northern Europeans becoming American citizens rather than Mexicans or muslims. I think US immigration policy should reflect that.

First off, Canada != US, fellow American.

Second: people and businesses can limit the forms of payment they'll accept for practical reasons all the time. As in: no bills over a certain amount, or refusing payment in pennies. Coins CAN be legal tender, but no merchant or private party MUST accept a particular form of currency. Don't want to accept $1 bills, only $5 and $10? That's fine:

  http://www.snopes.com/business...

"Legal tender is the default method of payment assumed in contractual agreements involving debts and payments for goods or services unless otherwise specified."

Third: the currency is defaced. That is the whole point - it's potentially not legal currency if you've drawn all over it. If you interfere with security features in the bill and it becomes more risky to trust as valid (such as, counterfeit bills that meet other security features elsewhere on the bill)...then they are right to refuse it.

I'm kind of shocked Canada doesn't specifically outlaw defacement of the currency; the US sure does.

Lead as a pollutant? Maybe. But that was yesterday's EPA. Today's calls CO2 one. I call EPA unrestrained, unscientific extremists. The fusion of climate science with leftist ideology is a great tragedy of the last 30 years. The end of life on earth will come when tectonics have ceased, volcanism slows to nothing, and CO2 is gradually bound to carbonates in the oceans. Photosynthesis becomes impossible, severing the food chain. About 10^9 years. Enjoy CO2 while we have it.

Yeah, you wouldn't want EPA regulations made from 'settled science' with full transparency. That wouldn't be in these activist's style. Obama went rogue long ago.

From a 1990 essay comes the insight
"The ability to get ahead in an organization is simply another talent, like the ability to play chess, paint pictures, do coronary bypass operations or pick pockets. There are some people who are extraordinarily good at manipulating- organizations to serve their own ends. The Russians, who have suffered under such people for centuries, have a name for them-- apparatchiks. It was an observer of apparatchiks who coined the maxim, 'The scum rises to the top.' "

http://bobshea.net/empire_of_t...

It is as insightful in its own way as "The Mythical Man-Month".