Except when it is. I'm a somewhat suspicious type, so the only projects I've funded are ones where the work has already been done, and they have a quote from a manufacturer in hand, but they don't have the funds to get it done. (In my case, it's been for print runs of books.) In those cases, which admittedly may be a minority, Kickstarter has just replaced the preorder mechanism they had in place prior. It's great for that, because you don't have to trust some random artist with your money and hope that if they don't raise enough for the print run they'll process refunds efficiently.

Kickstarter is not the job market. It's a way for creative types to avoid the job market. You want a resume full of creative projects? Create things, and show them off. If they're good enough, people might just pay you for copies.

It's admittedly unintuitive, but if you run chrome with the --incognito flag it does what you're looking for.

Here's an interesting fact related to that: the first person killed in an automobile accident in the United States, was struck by an electric car.

Imagine a beowolf cluster of us! Oh, wait, this is the internet, it's probably been done, with video.

I don't think millions of people around the world lose their fingernails every day doing things like this.

Generally you wouldn't have to do all of those things, just the ones that have failed. For many birds, that just means they're out of fuel, and that's the easiest thing to retrofit: you don't refill the tanks, you just attach a new one with its own set of thrusters. That's still quite difficult, but definitely technically feasible. Whether it's economically feasible is another story, which is presumably what this project is meant to determine.

If it turns out to be practical, then I expect that future satellites will be designed to allow for proper servicing.

Altius is even involved in the project in TFA. Jon hasn't been able to say much about it, unfortunately, but it does seem like a promising lead.

The Griffith Observatory in LA has one of the few remaining Tesla-built Tesla coils, and they do a demonstration like that. They used to pass out fluorescent bulbs, but with the proliferation of personal electronics and (more importantly) implanted medical devices they've had to put it in a Faraday cage. They still have both fluorescent and neon lights in the cage so you can see how it works, though.

Their promotional video includes pictures of the interior. There's a lot of work that needs to be done.

They do indeed have systems like that, if you're interested it's worth looking into how they dealt with the Sol 18 Anomaly on Spirit. Of particular note is the "Shutdown Dammit" command that they used to override everything else the rover was doing so it would stop wasting battery overnight.

Seeing as they were able to update the software on a device that wouldn't even finish booting, I imagine the procedures for doing it on a functioning device are pretty robust, even if they're still nailbiting.

It did work during the Vista fail. It didn't push (many) people toward Linux, but the loss of confidence in MS is an important contributing factor to Apple's increasing market share. I fully expect the rate of Mac adoption to increase after October.

True, but CC0 gets you close enough that calling it public domain is accurate enough for most conversations.

MS has never given Linux a pass, but Android already opened the floodgates for lawsuits. Everyone knows that MS will fight this tooth and nail, which makes it all the more commendable.

I'm not sure I want to defend GP, since he had gotten into the "idealogues and zealots" argument, but it's worth clarifying how repos work.

A distro comes with its own repos preinstalled, but you are in no way restricted to just using those. Adding additional ones is trivial, effectively the same as installing something on Windows - you have to download and double click a package, and it requires an admin's password - and from that point on it is seamlessly integrated into the system updater. Google does it that way for Chrome, and I see no reason Valve wouldn't for Steam.

GP may have been ranting, but his only claim was that they wouldn't preinstall Steam's repo (something I think is unlikely, given that Skype is often now included), not that it would be difficult to get.