Statistics and the scientific method triumph again!

There are a lot of systems in the world that have to work correctly to prevent disaster, and NASA certainly deals with this all the time. They've got a lot of smart engineers that work on this stuff, and they have a lot of experience with it.

You can play armchair engineer all you want, but that doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. Saying "There are X systems that are mission-critical, thus I believe it will fail" all but demonstrates that you have no familiarity with the project*, and your statement of personal incredulity is naught but a fallacious argument from ignorance.

*To be fair, neither do I.

I'd much rather get useful new display options (say, a stream of all articles likely to be interesting), or options to hide boring news stories as they rise. (I ended up avoiding Google News the last two weeks as the Casey Anthony trial flooded the headlines. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a darn.) While I understand that it's easy to implement flair over UI/UX improvements, and that adding addicting achievements is good for site traffic, lets try to maintain the focus on bringing value to the user, ok?

Who are you to determine who or what someone else falls in love with? Sure, you may not be interested, but maybe you should leave determining what feelings are to the person who is experiencing them.

What will you claim next? That homosexuals are not really in love? That their love is eccentric, kinky, quirky ... even obsessive and crazy? No? Then, by the same token, I say leave the robosexuals alone.

If ISPs keep capping the amount you can pull per [time unit], yeah, they will become a passing fad.

"Lookee! We made a shiny trailer of something that would be really cool!"

Sure, it looks cool, but is that the only thing you've produced?

Who do I have to pay off to get on that list?

Well, if you're looking for page hits and ad revenue, start with news. Run everything from new releases to new projects to new laws.

I would also suggest a solid FAQ section on Why and How to open source, etc.

TFA does well by pointing out that everything open should be discussed -- open hardware, open business practices, etc. It also suggests selling @open.org email addresses for lifetime members, etc.

They have a funding drive going on right now.

They have a lot of people on their side, but the real issue will be paying down the technical debt in the codebase. It really needs an overhaul.

You can also put it through a lot more testing than you can a human -- unit testing, simulation testing, fuzz testing, stability testing -- and all of it can be done in parallel. Sure, you're still going to be going through the study-design-test-release model, but to run around saying "bugs are inevitable" and "UAVs are a menace because programmers can create bugs" is to ignore a whole fucking lot of safety standards and tests that are (or can be) put in place.

This. Find a goal that the students will find interesting (It hosts your own website! It doubles as a media center! Make a cheap computer for you and yours! etc.) and walk them through the tools they will need to accomplish that goal. (Personally, I just found having a bitchbox interesting, but not everyone immediately sees the value in that.)