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Comment Re:privacy? (Score 1) 276

Well, there are incubators that support some shiny new thing, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram but they tend to Do One Little Thing Well, a la Unix, and then sell their soul for rock-n-roll.
But we think about IT here. There are also business in the Real World http://www.groundedcoffeeshop.com/ but both of these examples underscore your broader point, if I may radically restate it: economic activity of consequence is a top-down, not a bottom-up affair these days.

Comment Re:I wouldn't call that a "surveillence society" (Score 5, Insightful) 254

In 1984, people also weren't always under observation by their telescreen. Actually, they almost never were. What made them "behave" was simply that they didn'T know when they would be.

So just not having a camera "trained on you" every second of your life doesn't make the total surveillance any less invasive. When you cannot tell whether you have privacy, you have none.

Comment Re:privacy? (Score 2) 276

The cost would seem proportional to the users.
As far as running the business, just let me sharpen my AWS knives a little more. . .
Of course, in our post-capitalistic era, just having a good business plan is necessary but insufficient to protect you from Big Oligarchy and Big Government, assuming you could pry them apart with a crowbar. If you offer a viable alternative, look for "something really, really unfortunate" to arrive with an innocuous name like "Net Neutrality", or something.

Comment Re:vs. a Falcon 9 (Score 1) 75

They can carry about 110kg to LEO, compared to the Falcon 9's 13150kg. That's 0.84% of the payload capacity. A launch is estimated to cost $4 900 000, compared to the Falcon 9's $61 200 000. That's 8.01%. That means cost per mass to orbit is nearly an order of magnitude worse.

Yes, this is a really small rocket. If you are a government or some other entity that needs to put something small in orbit right away, the USD$5 Million price might not deter you, even though you could potentially launch a lot of small satellites on a Falcon 9 for less.

And it's a missile affordable by most small countries, if your payload can handle the re-entry on its own. Uh-oh. :-)

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