Your comment is insightful, but this worries me a lot.
Believe it or not, I am among those that were stolen €500 for "gold" somewhere on another continent, a sum that was frozen during months before being refund (the following year), so you may understand a Paypal permanent account is just unthinkable for me anymore.

Then I'm obliged to admit 90% of my online transactions are with sites that only accept Paypal. While I systematically tell them how much I don't appreciate (and then use Paypal as a "one-shot" system, without an account), it looks like it's much more difficult for a reseller to setup a dedicated payment system, even though all banks by now offer this kind of service.

As concerns confidence, I'd say I'm confident in known banks, ie when a site redirects me to a system I know, it's OK...

OTOH, being abroad the US, here in Europe I patiently waited *one year* for this very same Dell Ubuntu laptop to become available, then the day before I was going to buy, the product disappeared, apparently because the work to homogeneously bring Ubuntu along with adapted drivers etc. had stopped in Dell, and the resulting product was becoming one-year-obsolete now (was delivered with last years's Ubuntu version).
So, indeed I had my money in hand, and the whole thing crashed, although not by Ubuntu's fault...
(I bought a mac, yes. Will retry in a couple of years...)

I went here merely for insight. But indeed: just no comment here on /.
Shall I presume this means GTK+ actually is *already* dead??

Well I'm a bit more optimistic, based on the current offers from geostationary satellites in Europe.
Like you I remember the times when having a sat connection meant both a sci-fi hardware à la James Bond and a terrible monthly rate, but being a camper van user I've carefully kept an eye on this these last years and, considering for instance the Eutelsat offers in Europe (which admittedly have a very bad lag, coming from GEO orbits), their cost lies around no more than twice the ordinary ADSL city connection here: something definitely accessible for almost anyone living in "the remote farm".
Based on this, I somehow expect O3B costing to lie in a relatively close area: too high for switching when living in a city, but actually reachable "in the outland" --or else they'll just push customers to Eutelsat...

Let's not exagerate.
French government indeed probably helped its industry through an export insurance scheme that somehow, in certain conditions, will allow Thales (the sat builder) not to die if the exchange rate become very wrong -but that's all they did, and the US are doing exactly the same now (they just started this kind of change insurance trick after France)

So, "yes and no": yes French gov.t (like now the US) found a way to insure export change rates, which helped Thales winning the O3B contract here.
But no, there just isn't such a think as hidden french influence bought in Africa: O3B is simply not a french company -indeed I think the CEO is american: actually it may well turn into an US way of influencing Africa if any :-D

And back to Thales, they also didn't just miraculously win thanks to their gov.t help: they are also the *only* company having developed, and deployed, three other constellations: Globalstar 1, Globalstar 2, and Iridium. So, they know the art, and the others don't.
You can call this almost a monopoly if you hate France so much, but it's a monopoly they managed to build. By themselves.

Backhaul is probably exagerated, but the idea behind sats is that, if you manage to deploy them all, then their worldwide coverage allows you to reach way more customers than just 'your rural area'.
Indeed in O3B the B is for "billions", and these billions are not only "our other, poorer brothers" -they are actual billions of customers. Billions like in $Bn...
So, yes, having a space constellation is more efficient than just deploying lots of fibers locally, at least financially.

BUT there is a trick: I said above, "if you manage to deploy them all".

Which means, your initial investment is enormously higher than what's needed to progressively, calmy deploy fiber. Clearly it's a bet.
And a bet even more daring as you really need to get ALL your sats up and running, or at least the complete sublset required to ensure continuous coverage, so it's just not even a matter of launching the first ones, starting with first customers, and going on: nobody will sign for a connection 50% of the time. You must have them all up there, all launches paid and run, all payloads active.
That's what O3B is succeeding in currently (they deployed 4 at a time, they just need the next 4 and it'll be actually operational -and indeeed the next 4 are being finalized for next launch, in a matter of months.
In contrast, the Canadian company advocated above is, well, just a theory for now.
And as soon as O3B will be running, that will become a failed theory...

In satellite constellation design, all the art is optimizing the orbits, the separation between sats, the beam coverage and agility, in order to lower the number of sats and launches. That's why Thales launches them four at a time for instance, or why they have dozens of fastly-movable antennas on each spacecraft. It's an art. Choose the wrong datarate, the wrong antenna coverage or the wrong handover strategy, you end with a twice costlier system to deploy.
(in addition, Canadians were doubly handicapped as obviously they wanted a constellation reaching up to their latitudes, so highly inclined : just more sats. O3B wisely aims only at "roughly equatorial" populations (up to 45 latitude anyhow), and by avoiding higher latitudes indeed they save a lot: less sats, and easier to launch with this.)

Sure.

Which is why I store water to fuel my car. For I'll then become a millionaire,

Ah yes, and also :

Of course,

Separated miraculously, with for instance a small solar panel, which will create fuel at such a rate that it'll recover the actual fuel that was needed to just bring it on location in less than two or three years.

How can you be so naive?
And you are both a "friend" and "friend of friend" here on /...

To begin with: Waze *started* with using Openstreetmap (and somehow even announced that their own edits they would give back to OSM, of course, since otherwise given the open license they'd had had just no right to use the maps)

So yes, what we're all talking here is just some private editing interface to Openstreetmap, that's restricted to fast-updating traffic-jam-generating roadworks issues basically.

On /. I'd better appreciate a larger discussion about how to maintain Openstreetmap independent, for instance, but sure, google bought waze, well, so they'll spit Openstreetmap out and replace the mapping with theirs, and then use the supposedly faster updating for themselves.

But you know, any user of Openstreetmap can do this too, and as fast.

Maybe a question worth asking, in the Hwy89 example above, would be: when did it appear on Openstreetmap to begin with.
Because, you know, anyone of us having free editing access, it may well have been updated straight by OSM users, *before* Waze guys did react.

The funniest is, because Waze did use OSM, the very same Waze users in such a case wouldn't even have understood who did the updating actually.

So, yes: mod parent up, please!

The company at the origin of this tries to leverage crowdfunding (in exchange for some observation time through a 'scope we all agree will be pathetic compared to the same amount spent on ground) because they need many such small 'telescope-sats' to perform their primary goal: detecting asteroids.
There are various ways to perform this from space, but all revolves around having *many* observing microsatellites, the many viewpoints needed to reconstitute asteroid trajectories.
And, for now, they only have *a single one* in development.

So, you geeks crowdfunding the second one are in fact helping them to setup an actual asteroid-detecting network.
At least, it's an original way of doing...

Indeed, by going higher you tap in the jet stream energy, i. e. a place where winds are over 50 mph all the time over occidental countries.
But, there is a simple reason why your british guy is 'old ass news': he didn't succeed, because a 20 Km tether is just too heavy to hold from a plane, full stop.

Or not.

The solution exists, but it's not his: you'll fly, eternally, tapping jet stream energy, by assembling TWO aircrafts linked by a much shorter tether, one staying IN the jet stream, the other BELOW it, i. e. in almost-zero winds : an anchor of sorts -or rather the keel of a sailboat, also in a fluid that doesn't move compared to wind.

As the boundary is typ. 1Km thick you then only need ~3Km tethers, which while weighting a lot (and dragging like a 10m parachute) actually IS bearable, by normal-sized gliders, linked by existing cables. (I mean, no futuristic buckminsterfuller-carbon-fibers-from-tomorrow or whatsnot hypotheses here. It just works.)

In my company (which builds satellites) we identified this years ago, initially as a threat to the sat market.
We patended it, worldwide, and then the crisis was on us and no more investment available.
I cannot count tne number of official R&D fund responsibles, internal and external, public and private, that just laughed at this idea.

But, the files, detailed simulations, actual off-the-shelf materials to use etc. are still there.
Mind you, at jet stream altitudes, your wifi transmitter sees 500 Km diameter on ground: this I call 'to deploy a network'. Someone will react.

I'm patient and optimistic.

I very precisely remember when Excel, version 1, was released. At this time Lotus 123 was the main, most famous and most efficient worksheet, and there were more macintosh users than PCs.
Excel was released and adopted in a matter of months in my company on the only basis it was "both mac and PC compatible". Microsoft did a huge and very efficient bet on the fact large corporations' computer responsibles were using PCs and considering macintoshes as funky windows-based things not worth.

And, guess what, Excel v1 had an easter egg, triggered going to the last row last cell I think: this would start a pixelated animation (black & white, that was the time) showing the 1-2-3 icons from Lotus wiggling like small microbs at the bottom of the window, then a big, heavy Excel icon just fell savagely onto them, smatching them to nothingness... Even at the time it was a bit borderline...

Spamfiltering, would allow you to safely check mail "when you have time to kill".

Alas, choosing Facebook means no spam filter will ever be available.

Indeed, I buy your 'less obstrusive' argument -that's the first one I find in favor of FB.
But, I fear it's an answer for the lazy ones: setting up a good spamfilter was long, involving training etc. Setting up FB is faster.

And because it is faster, and almost all young adopters are lazy, FB will *undoubtedly* destroy the idea of spam filter itself. A bit like Google groups destroyed Usenet.

Now why do I feel so old...

I may be wrong, but I think the french-based original Mandriva was almost dying one year ago, for various reasons among which a basic economic one (founders split and close to bankrupcy, not reactive...). they apparently turned to other customers than the average end-user.
I did use Mandriva seriously 3 years ago then dropped it on the occasion of an update deleting everything and not recovering from the backup...
Mandriva was cooler than Ubuntu, actually automating many hardware handling, and less hegemonic -I'm going to look seriously into Mageia, yes.

There are billions *per galaxy*

Because actually detecting exoplanets is recent and fancy shouldn't prevent us to understand this. You may wish to consult the PHDcomics stance on this at http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1584 , at least they understood it the right way: indeed it's the lack of planet around a star that's the exception.

Since the idea is recent it'll take 10 years to mankind at large to accept is as normal, but come on, not on slashdot! ;-)

Obviously it's not "most planets are bigger than Earth", it's very exactly "our present detection method being a measure of star movements due to the planet presence, we only see enormous jupiter-like things for now".
How to say it politely?
"I hope the OP summary is, er, too concise, otherwise this just means Hawaii climate turns the scientists silly..."