Yes, I'd love to see more use of open source software in government. Find me an free software replacement for Systems Toolkit, and we'll talk.

Sometimes, yes, sometimes, no. Customers definitely DO have legitimate needs sometimes. Sure, for 90% of what MS-Office users do, Libre Office would be fine. Not so with Photoshop vs GIMP. Gimp is close and getting closer, but not enough for the moment.

I figured that to be the case between KDE Mint 15 and 16, having come from Kubuntu. The Mint folks actively discourage upgrading and encourage fresh installs. Turns out they mean it. dist-upgrade did not work for me as it has for the past umpteen years with Kubuntu. That's one of a few reasons I'm switching back to Kubuntu.

While lying to someone is quite bad, it is a whole order of magnitude worse to be forced to lie with them.

An animator is one skill, an entrepreneur is another. Quite frequently, people only have one of them.

You must be one of those Gall-Peters "lets make Africa look like a limp dong" map proponents.

Mercator was not made and is not used for political purposes. When it's used in publishing, it's because the square format of the projection fits nicely on a single vertical-formatted book page. If the publisher is opting for something across 2 pages, they'll typically use a reference map such as Robinson or Winkel-Tripel.

Mercator IS used in places like Google maps, because it's great for navigation.

The big boss types usually show up in a suit. The rest of us are anywhere from jeans and t-shirt to buisness casual depending on personal tastes.

Try Starbucks Seattle. Turns out there are a bunch of them. Yeah, not even close to as nice as defaulting to finding things right nearby your location, but not completely useless, either.

Uhh, hello? Each occupied prison place is income for politicians' corporate overlords/future lobbying customers. FTFY.

Oh, right, I forget that people actually use the web without an ad blocker.

Maybe the "kitty-litter like" substance is a clue?

Relax, people. It's a small asteroid in an orbit beyond the moon. We'll have hundreds of thousands of kilometers between us and a smallish rock in space.

There are a few reasons it's being done with ground stations right now. This current project we're discussing is a "Demonstration", meaning that the technology has to be proven over several missions, and this is only the first. It's freaking hard to hit a 40 cm spot on the earth, not to mention a 10 cm telescope on a satellite orbiting the moon. My guess is they'll do a TDRS style constellation of satellites when the tech is proven (which I think it will be)

Replying to undo accidentally modding 'redundant'. In fact, I totally agree. It sounds like a way to get people excited that they're doing something for a hip new company, not for some cynical rich guy.

So let's just throw our hands up in the air and do nothing, eh?