RedHat, Suse and Canonical all sell support, not Linux and other Open Source software. You pay for RedHat (the most successful FOSS vendor) to have access to RHN for package updates, someone to call for support, training and certification, and a conduit back into the FOSS community. Suse is similar. Canonical still has a way to go in the enterprise space but has a solid financial backer, and is making money using FOSS to provide services. In fact you can include Amazon, Google and a host of others as successful companies that leverage FOSS to provide services.

I'm an advocate of 3D printing, but wouldn't it me more effective to build container sized housing components in a factory and ship them to the building site? It seems like a lot of work to ship in the concrete and its printer. A typical 2000 sqft house in the US could be put together from six standard 40' containers, all wired, plumed and finished at the factory.

I think you've seen too many movies where soldiers and sailors are non-thinking robots. Yes they are trained to follow orders, but they are also trained to think for themselves. It is highly unlikely they will shoot their fellow citizens without questioning the legality of the order. Plus the Constitution forbids the use of the Army and Navy for domestic law enforcement. That's the reason they aren't sent in immediately after national disasters... The state governors call up the national guard. And why Coast Guard detachments are assigned to Navy ships to make drug busts. The military doesn't even carry their guns around when on US bases, unless they are expressly training. Civilians provide most of the security and law enforcement on military bases. If anything, the political class would prefer the military deployed overseas if trying to suppress the population. Make it less likely they can join the rebellion.

Generally I'm a fan of opt-in and agree that should be the option, but the bankruptcy court's job is to recover the maximum amount of money for the people Borders owed money to. The database is worth more opt-out, so don't expect a change there. Of the options available, none really good, B&N getting the database is not that bad. I have a buying history with Borders, Amazon and B&N, so integrating my buying history from Borders with B&N is a far preferable outcome to the database being sold to some marketing company that would resell my buying habits to spammers all over the world. We give these companies access to our information to get slightly better deals, if you are really concerned about your privacy, pay cash and refuse the discounts, or lobby congress to make your purchasing habits your property and not the property of the company you are buying from.

The only "good fit" about it is Amazon has stable and competent management.

The movie Ice Station Zebra was nice, but at least reference the book it was based on. http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Station-Zebra-Alistair-MacLean/dp/1402790333/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1316100563&sr=8-4 Especially sense it was just re-released.

I've seen government institutions have unallocated money at the end of some budget cycle, that was so micro-managed that it could only be spent on a certain type of widget. I can see a university get a late grant, that had to be spent in 30 days, could only be spent on technology, that can only come out of a pre-approved catalog, and some administrative type that just saw a Top 500 super-computer list with competing university names on it, bring up in a meeting that we should build a super computer, and some grad assistant saying how easy it would be. They found a room with a window in it and ordered a bunch of parts, and will walk prospective students and their parents by it saying "This is the largest super-computer on the east coast".

Introduce them to Scratch. http://scratch.mit.edu/ It's an easy programming environment where they can actually create something. You can demo programs other kids have written and depending on the time you have, they could actually create programs themselves.

Six months ago Gaddafi and his government were legitimate. There are export restrictions to many nations (both from the US and Europe), but was there one to Libya? I'd suspect there wasn't. So this becomes a moral issue. Companies should have a "don't sell to dictators" policy. We should isolate them from all trade. No more business with China until they have a freely elected government. No more oil from Saudi Arabia until the kingdom is overthrown. The only viable solution is for "free" governments to allow and encourage anonymous, encrypted communication. Yes, that will make the job of law enforcement harder, people will use it to violate IP laws and traffic in child porn, but it is the only way to enable free exchange of ideas outside government control.

Facebook, Linkedin and MySpace fill some need, but people want something different. If Google+ is just the same again, maybe it'll fail. There may be something important with exclusivity: a social network that is more tribal and walled could be what people are looking for.