I highly recommend reading an article titled Groupon is Effectively Insolvent in which the author draws a compelling parallel between Groupon and a Ponzi scheme.

That depends on where you live. See The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy page for details. It's surprisingly interesting. To offset that OT comment I will now sheepishly admit that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is my favourite of all the Star Wars movies and yes, I will go see it again in 3D.

If they are free to walk out at any time, why is the capsule locked? (No, seriously.) The other thing that jumps out at me is the duration of the trips but the relatively short amount of time (two days) spent on 'Mars'. Surely a mission to Mars would include more time on the planet? The time spent on the planet would be more intellectually stimulating than the spaceflight (one presumes) and might offer relief/reward from the journey to Mars and better prepare the crew psychologically for the return mission. I wonder why that wasn't factored in. The difficulty of simulating the on-planet experience perhaps?

Bonus question: Would an actual mission to Mars pay astronauts more than $70,000 per year?

Excellent ST:TNG reference. Well done, sir. I fear, however, it was too subtle for those with mod points.

This will inevitably lead to a new brand of vodka advertised as being made with "14 million year old, subglacial, super-oxygenated water".

While it leaves many (mostly technical) questions unanswered, I found the this article to be an interesting and informative description of what happened.

One lesson that comes to mind is that you shouldn't refer to your website's participants as "peasants".

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." - blue_beetle (quotation taken from here)

I would gladly submit to detention and interrogation for five hours if I were guaranteed some ice cream and a blow job in return. Given that fact, much like liberty and safety, I probably don't deserve either.

A solution I don't want to a problem I don't have from a company I don't trust. Great.

In regards to the unending Android vs. iPhone debate, this story made me think of Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. As a long time user and proponent of open systems I surprised myself when I realized that I while I'd rather my computers be bazaar, I prefer my phone to be a little more cathedral. I wonder how many others are comfortably embracing this dichotomy?

I thought the current estimates of Russian military spending were inflated.

It appears Lucas is trying to give the White Album a run for its money...

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

I don't know about sending you back a USB flash drive but Floppydisk.com offers a service to transfer the contents of floppy disks to CD (see here). Unfortunately the procedure is expensive, prohibitively so in my opinion ($55 USD for the recovery of 10 floppy disks). Luckily there is a more affordable alternative. The FC5025 is a device that adapts a standard 5.25" floppy disk drive mechanism to USB and comes with software for Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux. It costs $55.25 USD. Given that you already have a 5.25" mechanism, which aren't easy to find these days, the FC5025 is an affordable solution to your problem.