This is very cool.
The magic and complexity seems to be all in the optic path; if they're forming a carrier tape with a special cavity to carry the lens, maybe they should focus (ha!) on also putting the LED on that carrier and controlling the dimensions of that small piece such it it can be held directly against a slide and remove the need for laser-cut paper and controlling the focal distance during folding and assembly of the paper. Then a reel of the optical "guts" could be produced and shipped.

But then again, I could just be a random stranger on the Internet talking out of my ass.

Simple: we have everyone where we want it to rain wash their car or hang out their laundry to dry.

Yes, and TS doesn't always get you a polygraph, either. Even SCI doesn't automatically mean a polygraph.

There are plenty of people with clearances (most?) who are not direct government employees, but are contractors to the government.

This is exactly Radio Shack's problem; they have that goofy cable in stock in 4000 stores across the country, on the off-chance that 100 people a year will want to buy one for $35. Everyone who can afford to wait two days will be getting it from Amazon or monoprice, but the guy who needs it today will only ever need one; if he needs more, he'll buy the one in stock and get the rest on Amazon. The last time I was in Radio Shack two months ago, they still had blank VHS tapes on the shelf.

As much as we bitch and moan about the decline of Radio Shack, the truth is that such a niche market can't support retail space in a mall.

Yes, that's exactly what is going on. No insurance, no bonding, no regulation. The only thing backing any of these exchanges is the reputation of the exchange. There probably is an opportunity for an exchange that's actually backed by some sort of "real world" protection, and the climate seems to changing (especially in the last two weeks) such that people would pay a premium to park their Bitcoins there.

Loosely speaking, a Bitcoin is a secret number. To spend a Bitcoin, you send that number to someone else and the transaction is recorded by the Bitcoin network. The network keeps track of who owns each coin, which means others can verify the ownership of a coin by consulting the network.

The exchanges work by you "spending" your Bitcoin to them, so now in the network's eyes, the exchange is the owner of that coin. In return, the exchange keeps a record that you have a certain number of Bitcoins in your account. The idea being that in the future you can instruct the exchange to send coins back to you, to other people, or to deduct an amount of coin and send you the cash instead.

It's just like a bank; you hand a teller $20, the bank adds $20 to your balance, and they keep the $20 bill.

Where these exchanges differ from a bank is in their lack of accounting ability, apparently.

Meh. They know what they're signing up for. I would hope that all those military science classes taught by the ROTC that they took while working towards their degree would clue them in, as well.
I declined the military route as neither the commitment nor the chance of shooting people or being shot at appealed to me.

I have a cousin who graduated from commercial pilot school with $70k+ of debt just after 9/11. After six months of job searching when airlines just weren't interested in hiring, he joined the Army and began flying blackhawks. Ended up a few years later teaching in their helicopter school.

Perfect solution? Of course not; he's done 4 tours overseas and been moved around to 3 different bases States-side since then. But having a mortgage-sized student loan 12 years later is not one of his problems.

Some would call it "guaranteed 3-year employment after college".

A lot of Monday morning quarterbacks on this one. Yes, they might have been able to cut lots of corners and gotten Atlantis up, at a significant risk to the Atlantis crew. What then? Do we have the Columbia crew spacewalk over to Atlantis with instructions for the last astronaut to turn off the lights? Aim Columbia at the ocean and hope for the best?

If they had had such a plan in place and executed it, and some other loss of life had happened because of the increased risk, everyone likely would have been up in arms about how NASA had cavalierly risked additional crew when they could have just reentered Columbia.

You've got questions?

We've got cell phones!

As many people have pointed out, regulated banks in the US have the FDIC behind them to give depositors a warm cozy feeling when they drop off their money. In exchange for that backing, the banks agree to abide by a set of rules to safeguard deposits and pay into the fund that is used to reimburse depositors of failed banks. MtGox (and every other Bitcoin exchange) has none of that. Their biggest asset is their reputation, which will never recover from this even if they could scrounge up the money to make whole all of their accounts.

I suppose a better example would be asking your frat brother to hold onto your cash for you. Maybe he could keep it in his glove box, if we really need a car analogy.

Just about any scenario where money is held as cash or a deposit in a bank account could apply equally to Bitcoin. You give a stack of $100 bills to a bank, they give you a slip of paper showing they have your money and will give it back when you ask. If the bank president or a crooked teller then puts everyone's stacks of $100 bills in a suitcase and disappears, your slip of paper isn't worth much.

In the case of the Pirateat40, it was a classic Ponzi scheme. The fact that it was done with Bitcoins instead of pieces of paper with pictures of dead Presidents and statesmen on them doesn't change much.

Is there a possibility that a change is possible within your current company? It sounds like you're not unhappy with your employer, just your position. If they are a great company to work for, maybe you should bring up your concerns with them about making a move within the company to stretch your wings a little.

The best way to make that happen might be with the new job offer in hand. Ask for a meeting with your manager, and stress that you're not unhappy with the company, but that this opportunity came your way and it gave you a chance to reflect on what you want out of your career. Lay out what you would like to see change in clear, concise language. If you can't put it into words, that tells you that you need to think it through some more to make it clear to yourself exactly what you are after.

If they can't meet your needs where you're at, then it's time to give notice and take the offer. If they get all offended and fire you, then it probably was time to go anyway and you can let the new company know that you want to get started immediately.

Just remember: the grass on the other side of the fence might really be greener, but it could just be because of the extra fertilizer.

Do they still have the ridiculously cheap Volt leases? Last year there were times when you could drive a Volt for $199/month with something like $3k down. For a $45k car, that was crazy cheap. The speculation was that GM was subsidizing the leases to get them out of the factory and on the road, so they could point to the numbers and show that the car was a success.

Doing a quick Google search shows there are places offering $249/month 36 month leases today. Whether or not there are cars to actually be had at that price may be a different story...