FireChat requires that users create an account online (with an email address) before they can use the app. This and the lack of encryption limits its usefulness.

Not disagreeing entirely with what you're saying in the rest of your post, but this particular issue could be mitigated by having ratings only factor in scoring from the same region/country as the prospective customer.

In addition to Voyager529's response above, another major BSD is OpenBSD, which focuses on security.

... or a mass relay connected to a galaxy-wide FTL network.

The results aggregate data for all users of each provider. In Australia at least, many providers offer different types of access (e.g. cable, DSL, 4G wireless), making some of the results less than meaningful.

Setting aside instability, most people may not be inclined to initiate wars, wipe the world out or create viruses, but if a sentient AI took over, many would resort to these measures to reassert their dominance/freedom.

Sounds like the answer is staring the gaming industry in the face: when preparing the game's business case, incorporate the outputs of those two months into a free patch/expansion patch, and set the price accordingly (or define the initial feature set accordingly, if price needs to be X). Of course, it's easier to be greedy and generate an additional revenue stream (paid DLC).

Someone mentioned above that the vote has no functional meaning. I disagree.

The glowing patterns, properly designed, can help astronauts see the relative orientation of other astronauts, particularly in low light situations. The more distinctive yet simple the pattern in terms of placement relative to the body of the wearer, the better. The first option (A) obscures this by not clearly aligning all the luminescent lines with the shape of the human body. For me, this makes "biomimicry" functionally less suitable. The third option (C) has lines on all limbs without much to distinguish between them, meaning that when observing from other orientations, there could be confusion for the observer. Granted, the illumination on the backpack mitigates this at some angles, but the second option (B) has distinctive front and back and clearly shows an observer the orientation of the wearer. Option B looks arguably most functional.

As an added bonus, the luminescent pattern in option B can also serve to symbolise the origin of the astronauts, in the highly unlikely even they come in contact with another intelligence :) The second option's (B) "technology" pattern on the front approximates the bipedal shape of a human, while the others do not.

Not only that, but the discrete graphics cards consume substantial amounts of power and generate more heat than the rest of the device combined.

Thanks to nexusmods.com I've been replaying the Bethesda open world games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas) for years now. These not only still look spectacular on modern hardware, but entire new quest lines and regions are available via modifications that are easily managed via the (GPL'ed) mod management tool.

With the release of Civilization V: Brave New World DLC, Civ V has finally become a superior successor to all its predecessors (though it hasn't quite eclipsed the story orientation of Alpha Centauri), so that gets its fair share of game time, too.

Finally, I was bored the other day and decided to finally try out GTA:IV. While I had been a fan of the original two GTA games, the 3D once since hadn't managed to include sufficiently interesting story and characters to really engage me. So while I'd played the Mafia series, the recent GTA games were tried and quickly set aside. Imagine my surprise to discover that GTA:IV had actually improved. The characters are still lacking depth, but then so are those in Bethesda games. The important thing was they were finally engaging enough to not seem completely interchangeable, and the quests were aligned to some kind of plot I could follow. So for now, I'm happily playing through it and look forward to when GTA:V is released for the PC.