Kickstarter isn't an investment. It is funding a product that isn't on the market and, if successful, is then delivered to you. There's a bit of risk -- the product may or may not be as good as described and you will likely never receive it on schedule. But I've participated in a dozen of these and on the most part am very pleased with what I receive.

I agree but then.. there is very little human achievement without a stable government.

The overlooked word is 'countries' which is significantly different than city or state. Gun crimes would likely decrease if the entire country were locked down. Given the porous borders of cities and states in America, strict gun laws in one area would only have a minimal effect.

Would the back yard really be the best place? If disaster struck that might potentially result in more widespread contamination... even if a small percentage of reactors along the fault line or in a hurricane's path were to fail, this would still encompass a larger area compared to some power plant in a remote location.

How old are you? I was able to eat anything and everything until I hit 30... after that, couldn't take things for granted anymore.

Thank you for your adding your experience. Look, I am not strictly against downloading / copying music. I do it sometimes and if the music is great then I will gladly pay for a CD or go to a concert. I understand the alternative revenue streams. But I know many people who only download -- they don't go to any concerts, don't even throw in a dollar for one measly MP3. And it bothers me when they wonder afterwards why the band sends out a newsletter about being broke and breaking up or when they 'sell out'.

Okay, fair. I see what you and the other responders are getting at. I mistook your earlier comment as justification for copying something just because it's easy and digital. Thank you for clarifying. The problem now is what can we do about it.

So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once? Or, since this is slashdot, you write a pretty great application... you are okay with selling it once and then everybody else can just get a CD copied from their buddy?

Are you kidding. It is an arms race. All this will do is force the US military / government to spend MORE to come up with the next-generation design.

I don't see anything pretentious about it. They call themselves 'hackers' as opposed to painters or writers or photographers. NYC Resistor offers a shared communal workspace, I suspect the label is necessary to inform prospective participants of their modus operandi. On a side note, is it such a bad thing for creativity in the "industrial arts" to be popular? Save the judgement for the hipsters.

I think the summary is talking about lighthouses.

Or baseball players.

Maybe free as in liberating rather than price? I don't mean to threadcrap but I thought Google's intent was to take books that basically nobody have access to anymore and making them available. What use is a previously free work that nobody can read? Ideally, publishers should take the initiative to make all out-of-print, rare, orphaned books available.

God works in mysterious ways.

In the summary (and the article), it is mentioned that "X Windows has issues with network latency and bandwidth." Neatx resolves some of these issues.