Whether 'Texan environmentalists' can be real or not-- Personally I agree that spacetime would consume itself, or something. --can we please just give them back to Mexico now?

Hell, Florida too, for all I care, though I'm not entirely sure how that'd work out.

Ah yeah, the website in my profile is just where I post dumb crap. :)

I save http://tangibleimagination.com/ for more serious-ish stuff.

I had IndieGoGo recommended to me when I related this issue with Kickstarter in the comments on a Make article. I checked it out, and upon finding out you could crowdfund business endeavors, and not just projects... I decided "Go big or go home!" and made a campaign to try and raise money for some machine tools. (Read: Confronted with the possibility, I lost all sanity and did something impulsive and nutty.)

It proved semi-successful despite my bungling; I'm embarrassed to say it was rather spur of the moment, and the lack of preparation kept me from being able to adequately convey what I was offering...instead of just what I was trying to do.

And right now, I'm trying to fix my #$*&$@ printer so I can take care of the large mechanical drawings I promised as perks. (While also continuing to learn how to use my metalworking lathe.)

Luckily 90% of the donations came from people who know me on IRC and stuff so they get my awkwardness and will bear with me. ;)

I'll let you know when I take another shot at making the boards. ;)

Wow, those look awesome. My boards were more input device oriented though, and the pricepoint I was aiming for was ~$30 for over a dozen inputs.

This is absolutely ridiculous. I'm simply appalled that they would even SAY THAT. I'm not really that surprised though, as I've been on the receiving end of Kickstarter's questionable behavior as well.

I submitted a Kickstarter for a generic USBHID interface board (For making game controllers and input devices, though it really had tons of applications) and they rejected it for no reason. When pressed for an explanation, they said "Kickstarter is for creative arts projects and [my] project did not fit."

So, I guess having a DOZEN Kickstarters for Arduino clones going at any given time is okay, but if someone wants to make something that hasn't been run into the ground yet, fuck 'em! I mean, wow! I was only trying to get $500 together!

Is it wrong that my first thought-- after "Oh good, it's not HERE." --was to wonder why the hell someone would hack the medicaid records for Utah? I mean, really. Utah?

Tell me about it... I've had the goddamn A/C in the window for the better part of a week now here in Vermont!

I distinctly remember it snowing for TWO SOLID DAYS at the end of May last year. What the hell is going on?! This doesn't feel like 'climate change' so much as 'climate schizophrenia'!

Christ! Those are... Those are just ridiculous... I guess what I didn't understand is what crosswords have become!

Now I get what they mean by requiring some cleverness... I mean, there're PEOPLE who wouldn't get those! It makes a lot more sense now.

Would the Apollo example really trip up a decently-written program though? I mean, my first thought was "Well, what if it had a fallback routine where it tries anagrams of possible answers?" so I have to imagine someone smarter than me has thought of that. I guess there's some limitation I'm not seeing...

On second thought...what am I still doing awake at 5:48am commenting on a post about crossword-solving computers?!

It is literally impossible to keep a piece of software from being cracked if there's a demand. No matter how draconian a DRM scheme you implement, the software will be pirated, and the cracked version will be completely DRM-free, leaving you with pirated copies that treat the user better than the legit copies do.

Even software packages that utilize hardware security dongles are cracked between a week before, and a day after release.

For the most part, the people who don't pay for software wouldn't have paid in the first place. So what's the point? You just end up screwing your paying userbase.