I care and I don't even have an uninsured house ... though to be fair my uncle and aunt do :-( Pahoa is so remote you can't even get cellphone coverage there, but it's a beautiful area (it's on the island's rainy side so everything is lush and green). Houses cost in the 100-200k range, and while that is pretty cheap it still sucks to see it all melt away.

No rebranding needed. The Big Island has never exactly been the key to Hawaii's tourism industry (most of the island, especially on the volcano side, doesn't even have sandy beaches.) Plus, just about everything tourist-y on that island already is lava-themed anyway. They've got a lava forest, lava tubes, steam vents powered by underground lava, the giant volcano itself ... heck they even had a highway that got overrun with lava and instead of fixing it they turned that in to a tourist attraction!

Altrag already answered this very well, but I just wanted to make one other point: in lots of industries the consumer can already "defect" to a competitor with absolutely no impedance. It doesn't matter if I'm buying a computer from Dell or a box of Cheerios from Safeway: nothing stops me from buying a computer or cereal from a different manufacturer the next time I want one.

However, the "defectability" possible with all those products hasn't caused Dell or General Mills to go bankrupt; quite to the contrary both companies (and many others) have found ways to make the user want to continue purchasing their goods. Similarly here, even if a social network with almost no cost of leaving were to exist, it wouldn't necessarily mean that any company operating it would go out of business. Instead, it would just mean that company has to figure out how to please its customers.

There is very little evidence that that is true if you look at services on the web today. To the contrary, ads very often are the only way entire industries can profit on the web. Take newspapers: with only a handful of exceptions like the WSJ, every major newspaper in the country has had to switch to an entirely ad-supported model on the web, abandoning all their old subscription profits.

I'm not saying a paid Facebook-like service is impossible, just that there's (relatively) scant evidence that one could succeed.

Isn't that the idea? Everyone gets the Facebook(-like thing) they already know and love, only without the evil corporate overlord. If that "large player" became evil, the transitory nature of the setup would let everyone easily abandon that evil player.

Artec (the company behind this) has a storefront in downtown Palo Alto, so I decided to go in and get one myself. I'm not a narcissist, I just thought it would be fun, and wound up giving my figurine to my wife as an anniversary present (like a framed photo, only 3D).

BTW for those that are curious the storefront literally uses an XBox to do the scanning (unless you pay a lot, I think $200, to use a professional grade scanner). They don't do the printing on-site so I'm not sure how that's done, and I also don't know if the booths are any different (but I wouldn't be surprised if they had an XBox powering them).

Personally I enjoyed the whole experience and would recommend it to others. Getting a 3D-printed version of yourself feels very futuristic, and it's certainly something unique to have.

Amen. As a Literature major I've long felt that my essay writing skills have helped me write easier to understand and better documented code.

So let's say there's a one in five chance of a burned CD going bad within the first 20 years (total B.S. number, just trying to prove a point; the real number is likely worse). That means, in addition to you, there are also three other people out there, also thinking people spout "that same tired crap".

But one guy out there just lost his life's photos/videos. Welcome to the joys of backing up on unstable media that are just "fine" most of the time.

Here's the thing: words have multiple meanings. You can cherry-pick those definitions to "prove" KS isn't investing, or you could pick other definitions to prove the opposite.

For instance, let's take Wiktionary: if you look at the first definition instead of the second, it's "The act of investing, or state of being invested". Follow the hyperlink to investing and you'll see: "To spend money, time, or energy into something, especially for some benefit or purpose." Now, to be fair that's definition #5, but since definition #1 is "To clothe or wrap (with garments)." I think it's safe to assume the definitions aren't in order of relevance :-)

And really, the order doesn't even matter, nor does the dictionary. I imagine if I looked at some (if not all) of those other dictionaries, there'd be a similar definition of investing that does qualify for KS. But that wouldnt' prove you're "wrong"; it'd just prove that the word has multiple definitions.

So while "investing" may mean "purchasing an asset" to you, to many others it's closer to "spending money in the hope of a positive future outcome". Both definitions of the word are valid, even though once implies that KS is investing and the other implies it isn't.

From Google, the definition of "investment" is:

"the action or process of investing money for profit or material result."

With Kickstarter you invest money for a material result (the rewards). Seems like an investment to me.

Man, when personal citizens' rights and powerful corporate interests align, amazing things can happen.

Now if we could only get powerful corporations to do the same thing on NSA overreach, CIA overreach, money in politiics, ...

You're missing the point: here in America you're *supposed* to be able to "do things that make you look like you are hauling drugs". You're supposed to be able to do whatever you want, as long as it's legal, no matter how illegal it looks.

Let's say I look like a burglar because I locked my keys in the house and now I have to climb in a window: the police have every right to stop me. If I'm (somehow) using my wallet to try and jimmy the window open, the police have a right to seize that wallet. But once I've shown that I'm not a burglar, I should get my wallet back.

The point of this article is, that's not actually how it works. From TFA:

"You’ll have the right to seek its return in court, but of course that will mean big lawyer’s fees, and legally documenting exactly where the money came from. You will need to prove you are not a drug dealer or a terrorist.

It might take a year or two. And several trips back to the jurisdiction where you were pulled over. Sorry.

In places like Tijuana, police don’t make any pretense about this sort of thing. Here in the U.S., though, it’s dressed up in terms like “interdiction and forfeiture,” or “the equitable sharing program.”"

Amen, but ...

Now you just made a logical leap that I can't follow. Especialy when we both agree:

So is there more to being a good programmer than just syntax and APIs? Absolutely. But you'll need to give me some sort of evidence if you want to claim that fresh college graduates have more of the practical "theory of application" knowledge than an un-schooled coder, since that goes directly in the face of my experience. The way I see it, a college graduate is more likely to know how to implement a linked list (which they likely never will do), while the self-taught coder of the same age has at least worked on some projects and learned from some "reinvent the wheel" mistakes.

Maybe that analogy holds up for some companies; as I said, there are companies that need computer scientists who can code just like there are companies that *need* biologists, architects, or artists that can code. I want the Adobe Illustrator team to have artists on board, and I want Google's search team to have computer scientists on board.

But the reason your analogy falls apart is that not all applications are Google search. At all of the software companies I've ever worked for, and most of the ones my friends have worked at, knowing big O notation is *completely* useless. In contrast knowing that you want to cache your jQuery selector before starting a for loop (vs. re-querying on every iteration) is pretty important. But even still, I've interviewed plenty of developers with major companies on their resumes that didn't even know that much.

The simple truth is that a large number, if not the majority, of applications you use and websites you visit have team members with no CS degree. Some of them don't even have a person with a CS degree on the team. But those applications/websites aren't crashing and burning because they lack academic knowledge: they're (successfully) powering your life.

Wow, I guess I'm the only person on Slashdot whose first thought was "virtual keyboards I can actually feel, how cool is that?" and not "tentacle porn!"