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The only way to end without losing everything to hyperinflation and confiscation by the police state is to vote third party

And because of Duverger's Law the only way for that to happen is to get Approval Voting* implemented.

But the odds of that happening in time, against the hegemony, are asymptotic to zero. Since the last time it happened the two big parties have spent more than a century and a half ensconcing their rule in law.

* or more other more-difficult-to-understand-and-implement Condorcet method

What constructive actions can be taken, and how can the people be encouraged to support these actions?

As far as I can see, there are only two viable approaches.

1) replace the voting system. Plurality voting will always lead to the mess we have now. The only contribution towards politics I've made in years was to fund Approval Voting video. It's the best compromise for a replacement system. Work to get it allowed at your Town or City level, then we can take it higher.

2) Since you're a tech nerd, think about the things that people want government to do and build replacement systems for them. Make them better than the government systems. The problem is power, and the more people ask of the government, the more power they have. If a government were strictly limited, the abuses would not be so common and severe. But as they say, people get the government they deserve.

Then replace Kickstarter with Indiegogo. They allow pitching for this and for nonprofits in particular.

I just understood "kickstarter" in title as "crowdfunding", like "google it" for "search the internet" or "xerox" for "photocopier".

I also find it abit ethically problematic to reward someone financially for this kind of recording. I also this its a waste of money to pay for this video because:

1) The public discussion of the video has already been as bad as the release would have been. His reputation is so bad that even his supporters don't find these crack allegations farfetched. It's already been reported that he is an alcoholic, and he has ruined his reputation by being drunk and abusive in public. My opinion of Ford did not decrease at all when I heard of this video as it was already at rock bottom.

2) Ford has very little actual power as mayor, basically he just gets one vote in council and is in a position to influence the other councillors. Ford was already isolated on council before the crack story came out, making him a lameduck mayor for the rest of his term. For example, just recently the council voted 'no' to a downtown casino, something the mayor himself wanted. Politcally he is not likely to cause any more damage.

That said, the Rob Ford Crackstarter is at $137 000, I have a feeling we will all get to see the video some day.

How about the Open-Dollar? Bitcoin is based on a scarcity paradigm much like Gold. The Open-Dollar is a full Virtual Fiat Currency where the you create money by issuing the notes yourself Open-Dollar

Perhaps your support to the Judge Wright Statue can act as imaginary beating? ;-)

In sutiations like these, everybody always talk about how cool it would be to "do something". Several people have already mentioned a statue.

Well here goes: The unofficial Otis D. Wright Statue Fundraiser

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-unofficial-otis-d-wright-ii-statue-fundraiser

Go throw a buck or five at Judge Wright. Show the world that your respect for this man reaches further that a simple forum-post :-)

- Jesper

On March 16, 2013, my son and I were hiking along country roads among pastures and fields with my 15-year old son to help him earn his hiking merit badge. I always enjoy these father/son hikes because it gives me time alone with my son. As I always do when we go on these hikes and walks, I took my trusty rifle with me as there are coyotes, wild hogs, and cougars in our area. In Texas, it is legal to openly carry a rifle or shotgun as long as you do so in a manner that isn't calculated to cause alarm. In other words, you can't walk around waving your rifle at people. I always carry my rifle slung across my chest dangling, not holding it in my hands. At about the 5 mile mark of our hike, a voice behind us asked us to stop and the officer motioned for us to approach him. He got out of his car and met us a few feet later. He asked us what we were doing and I explained that we were hiking for my son's merit badge. He then asked me what I'm doing with the rifle, to which I responded in a calm manner, "Does it matter, officer? Am I breaking the law?" At that point, the officer grabbed my rifle without warning or indication. He didn't ask for my rifle and he didn't suggest he would take it from me. He simply grabbed it. This startled me and I instantly pulled back - the rifle was attached to me - and I asked what he thought he was doing because he's not taking my rifle. He then pulled his service pistol on me and told me to take my hands off the weapon and move to his car, which I complied with. He then slammed me into the hood of his car and I remembered I had a camera on me (one of the requirements of the hiking merit badge is to document your hikes). This video is the rest of that encounter. Up to this point, I am not told why I am being stopped, why he tried to disarm me, or even that I'm under arrest. We did not set out that Saturday morning to "make a point" or cause problems. Our goal was to complete a 10-mile hike and return home without incident. My son chose a route that away from populated areas but near our home. The arresting officer is Officer Steve Ermis and the supervisor is Sergeant Minnicks of the Temple Police Department. If you agree this was a gross act of exceeded authority, please help me fight these charges: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/2nd-amendment-legal-defense-fund/x/2679348

I have a cousin who's writing a book on this.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sky-crystals-unraveling-the-mysteries-of-snowflakes

This is of interest to me since at my day job we're trying to (advertisement warning) crowdfund our new email client.

We talked about funding individual ticket bounties, but that didn't make sense to us. For one thing, a lot of code changes aren't easily ticketable -- or the ticketing itself is a lot of work, i.e. planning meetings are required. It doesn't seem fair to pay for the programming but not the planning.

But the big problem is this: how do you get continuous enough funding to have a staff, an office, health plans, etc. when you're doing individual bounties? The funding seems like it wouldn't be stable enough to support the company.

I'd also point out that this very idea has been tried several times already, never with much success.

Laugh it up, but that really is most peoples' excuse for voting for those parties.

It's actually not a bad excuse - plurality voting guarantees that it will be one or the other. I don't know about you, but I donated to the Approval Voting Video on IndyGoGo.

Maybe the watch tie-in with Glass will have to do with typing. After all, voice commands can only take you so far. Here's a (corny) video that shows how typing can be accomplished on a watch: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-minuum-keyboard-project

all the cool hipster projects have a .io domain.

it's a demo project(advertisement) for http://www.indiegogo.com/pinoccio . there's a link the summary but the link has a typo on it(ironical? funny?).

To be fair, people *are* trying new things in the city builder genre, it's just not EA and Maxis doing it.

For example I am working with a small team to produce a city-builder that takes place on hostile alien planets. Lots of storms, caustic or absent atmospheres, earthquakes, fires, population control... sort of a Simcity meets FTL: Faster Than Light type game.

You can learn more about it here where we are crowdfunding to make it happen: http://www.indiegogo.com/terminusgame

Full disclosure: yeah it's my game and this is self promotion, but it's directly relevant to the discussion.

http://www.indiegogo.com/pinoccio Interesting because it is very small. However, the (current) lack of shields might be a detriment.

The solution you're looking for is StickNFind. Low power bluetooth stickers. Link to your phone and when the "sticker" goes out of bluetooth range, an alarm goes off. You can then your phone as a proximity sensor to track down where your stuff went. http://www.indiegogo.com/sticknfind (to order), and http://sticknfind.com/product/ to learn.

It works, just look at the "GravityLight" which has raised $373,430 at time of writing. Do the math on that thing, I think it just-just borders on being a scam.

You could DIY it - http://www.indiegogo.com/pinoccio

The thing you call "vaporware" has been shipping for weeks: http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard?c=comments

But don't let the facts get in the way of your rants.

Now, American Gut gives you an opportunity to participate and to compare the microbes in your gut to those in the guts of thousands of other people in the US and elsewhere.

American Gut - what's in your gut?

http://www.indiegogo.com/misfitshine

This is like the Fitbit but new and more durable, longer battery life etc. They don't ship until March but they're leading the CES Last Gadget Standing Contest right now. I got one for my mom and one for myself

From http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard?c=activity

A quick update, we have started shipping now. All the fast shipping and one rich packages are shipped out today. We will send out the tracking number soon. The 2/5/10 rich packages will be shipped in 2 or 3 days.

It's an interesting bit, seeing this happen. wonderful news all around.

But I'm more interested in seeing which of the crowdfunding websites ends up being more reputable, for projects like this. In terms of delivering their product, doing so on time, etc.

Some are certainly more important than others...
http://www.indiegogo.com/DrinkSavvy?c=home

But purely from an intellectual standpoint, it'll be interesting seeing which of the sites end up on top. And why.

The site is http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod and the preorders are open through Sunday.

--I feel yer pain, man. I really wanted a Pi back in November of 2011; after the delayed-shipping debacle, I said the heck with it.

--Finally ordered one of these for $59, after finding out about it due to a Slashdot comment:

http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard

--It has a SATA port, 1GB RAM, and comes with a 4GB Nand Flash ++ power cable included. Haven't received it yet, but so far the only accessory I've bought for it is an HDMI -> DVI video cable adapter for ~$8.

--I'm gonna put Squid + SSD drive on it and see if it can replace my old P4 Squid server :-D

In case anyone thinks this is interesting enough to throw money at it, I got this link from the FAQ page: http://www.indiegogo.com/hydroice.

I thought it was interesting enough to throw it a few bucks. Could be snake oil, but it could also be really cool.

From the indiegogo campaign (yes, the summary neglects to mention this is a bloody crowdfunded uni project):

Efficiency: Both steam turbines and Stirling engines are known to be quite efficient, typically falling around the 40% efficiency range. We won’t know exactly where our HydroICE technology will fall until testing is complete, but we’ll be able to reach at least 15% efficiency with projections falling closer to 30%.

Manufacturing and cost: Both steam turbines and stirling engines are extremely precise machines and as a result, we see that reflected in the high price that it costs to manufacture and purchase one. This makes them economically feasible only for large industrial scale applications.

Yep, Stirling engines are too precise to be economically feasible, but similarly precise gasoline engines are so cheap that even with extra modifications they'll be feasible... right.

There is XBMC support with hardware decoding for Allwinner, its been around for a month or so. Check the tail end of this forum http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=126995. This is the github with the source https://github.com/empatzero/xbmca10. Here are some build instructions http://linux-sunxi.org/XBMC. And there is this project that plans to put everything like this into a distribution for Allwinner devices http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod.

http://cubieboard.org/ and also on http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard

It uses the A10 and has more features. The A10 is a full featured version of the A13

1G ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache
Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
512M/1GB DDR3 @480MHz
HDMI 1080p Output
10/100M Ethernet
4Gb Nand Flash
2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir
96 extend pin including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP..
Android, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions

Found this relatively interesting board in rpi price range.

Official site: http://cubieboard.org/
They sold small numbers last month and are now trying to fund a 1k+ run via indiegogo: http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard

Some difference highlights from specs:
        1G ARMv7 cortex-A8 processor (2x as fast per clock), NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache vs 700MHz ARMv6
        Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU (lima reverse-engineered drivers) vs VideoCoreIV (free "shim")
        1GB DDR3 @480MHz vs 512MB DDR2
        10/100M Ethernet MAC built in the SoC vs USB 10/100M ethernet
        4GB Nand Flash vs nothing
        SATA2 port vs none
        2 USB Host vs 2 USB + ethernet from 1 USB via builtin hub
        MicroSD vs SD
        Costs $59, shipping included.

Holy smokes! Anyone heard of this atom microscope they use? I see they're now planning to build one for biology - http://indiegogo.com/atom-microscope

Did you happen to see the Formlabs Form 1 printer? They were at Maker Faire too. They're running a Kickstarter right now, and from the photos and video on there the parts that machine produces look far better than most anything else I've seen. I watched the video of the Tinkerines Ditto on IndieGoGo and the parts didn't look anywhere near as finely-detailed.

I'm quite interested in learning more about the Form 1 and it would be great if someone had a first-hand experience from maker Faire (I'm in Seattle and couldn't attend).

I pitched in (and hope to get one of these), after having done one of the online instructions for a very rough looking one. It seems like the sort of thing that will net me hours of goofing off for very little money. ;)

That Drip Clip sounds pretty cool, though it looks like it's IndieGoGo, not Kickstarter: http://www.indiegogo.com/shiftlabs

Unfortunately, $75 is a bit out of my funding range. Otherwise it'd be a nice little sensor to play with.

Here you go.

From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

I have a blog post up here as well:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

and there is an indieGoGO campaign going on here:

http://indiegogo.com/helios

Actually, it's this guy.

This is one of those put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is situations. Ken Stark and his buddies have refurbished ~1,500 computers, putting Linux on them, and donating them to poor kids in central Texas since 2005 (interview at LXer.com). Now he's battling throat and neck cancer. From his blog at http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html (written by her partner Diane):

Ken's cancer has just recently begun to spread to his right lymph node but his Oncologist has assured us that this is 80 percent curative if he gets the needed surgery in time.

Unfortunately, his 1100 dollar a month SSI disability disqualifies him for Medicaid care and the local county low-income insurance he was receiving. This leaves us with about 2 weeks to either raise enough money for at least the OR for the surgery (we are hopeful of finding a surgeon to do the work pro bono) or raise enough money for the entire procedure. We've spent hours upon hours researching and contacting the links some of you have provided but they are so limited in scope that 90 percent of them are not helpful at all.

We are looking at two weeks, maybe three before the cancer spreads past the point of surgery being an option. After that, we've been told just to make him as comfortable as possible until he passes. I'm not ready to accept that.

Stupid, this Medicare exclusion. More about the guy, by Steven Vaughan-Nichols of ZDnet fame:

+Ken Starks is a Linux and open-source supporter. He also runs a non-profit that's donated thousands of PCs to low-income households. Now, he needs help to fight cancer. For more on what's happening with him see:

http://thomasaknight.com/blog.php?id=71

https://plus.google.com/113169713749496726739/posts/aXdV6DZivhS

There's a donation page at Indiegogo, or you can do it directly from his blog. They have gathered about $7,700 and just reserving the OR costs about $50,000. Pitch in if you can. Anyway, spread the word.

Thanks for reading. I don't even know the guy; I only learned about it through an unsuccessful Firehose submission and decided to do something.

Halp me Slashdot! I need moneyz for muh gaem!!

Halp me Slashdot! I need moneyz for muh gaem!!

Halp me Slashdot! I need moneyz for muh gaem!!

yeah, at least some people have found their way to the original video where I explain the project myself...

Also, you should probably watch the pitch video which explains the project in more detail.

So I'll start an indiegogo page to get the funding...as long as someone else starts a fund for me because I did good by starting the fund :-)

So I'll start an indiegogo page to get the funding...as long as someone else starts a fund for me because I did good by starting the fund :-)

At least accordingly to this blog post [1], the same person who thinks that a cartoon having no real persons in it [2] is offensive, has published pictures of former president having sex [3] on his own website [4], which Charles and Tara Carreon maintains.

So I would see Charles Carreon as a definition of hypocrite in this context, by publishing pictures of sexual nature with real people in them and judging others because they use freedom of speech and create art.

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/17/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iv-charles-carreon-sues-everybody/
[2] http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood
[3] http://www.american-buddha.com/mondo.sceptre.htm
[4] http://www.american-buddha.com/what_is_buddhism.htm

Howver, the story doesn't end there (as most /. readers already probably know.... Inman put up a fundraising website to raise $20 000 to donate to cancer research (and bear love) - http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood - where he has up til now raised - brace yourself - more than $ 100 000 !!!

Matthew is accepting donations, will take a picture of all his monies to send to the FunnyJunk attorneys, and will donate it all to charity.

Right now it's standing at over $100k. Go internet!

Yes, sorry - I had added links after previewing in a separate tab, but ended up submitting the original.

So here we go:
KickStarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/
IndieGoGo: http://www.indiegogo.com/
RocketHub: http://www.rockethub.com/

Mythic: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/273246798/mythic-the-story-of-gods-and-men
Projektor: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1747147409/projektor-make-your-mobile-devices-larger-than-lif

KickStarter Mobile Phone App project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/128239212/kickstarter-mobile-phone-app
GloSpex (original): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816244302/glospex
Go GloSpex (resubmit): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816244302/go-glospex

Double Fine adventure: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
Pebble: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/

Javascript timer with now-blank divs that once housed actual server-written content - view any project page source, look for "ksr_page_timer". The divs that follow once contained server-written data (e.g. "44 hours left") - which needn't have been removed for the javascript timer to work.

xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/1055/

Quirky: http://www.quirky.com/

Note that the example projects mentioned were but a few. There's so many more that would stand out as examples of things where better screening, intervention, communication and combinations of the aforementioned would have been thoroughly welcome and easily serve as material that could cause a 'PR hit' than the subject matter of TFA.

You can go on more than faith. If you have access to Kickstarter.com you have access to a stalker's paradise of tools to find out how legit a project is.

Do your research:

1) Does the process pass the sniff test. Is it too good to be true? Does the money-side seem legit? Does it violate any physical laws, or laws of common sense? A surprising number will fail here.

2) Look at the project docs. Do they have a real thing to produce? If it's for an object do they have an actual working one or do they have just sketches and a nice rendering. Do they know how to mass-produce something? Do they know how to deliver all of their rewards?

A project can't over-communicate. Do they update and answer questions with good answers? Or are they evasive?

3) Google the crap out of the project team. What have they done. Have they done something like this? Have they done anything at all besides come up with a couple hundred words and a video? If they're scam artists it will show. If they're simply in over their head it'll show too.

4) Beware of the ones who are in over their head. There are a lot of them. Tons. Looking at the rewards vs the reward prices is a good place to start. Is there enough left after producing the physical reward to produce the project? People show up with a good idea and think "how hard can it be?" and then they drop a decimal when pricing rewards and end up in the hole $3 for each T-shirt they have to get out, and didn't include shipping, so could you add another $12 to your pledge, oh, and I had no idea that it cost that much to duplicate a DVD/tool a factory/rent a sound studio ... and the whole project collapses.

One of my biggest gripes about Kickstarter's setup is that you can't ask question on the project page unless you've ponied up the dough. That leads to a number of projects that are snake-oil getting funded.

I've back 2 and evaded many more. The two I backed delivered. One took 2x as long as anticipated, but they were in new territory, but they had a working model and I had personally talked to the team and they knew what they were doing. The second knew exactly every step to execute on it. And did.

Reply to self, would post anon if there weren't that annoying timer telling me it's only been 15 minutes since I last posted when I do so.

----

IndieGoGo, another crowdfunding platform, does actually spell out the option of taking the project creator to court yourself:
http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20501033-how-does-indiegogo-deal-with-fraudulent-campaigns

Indiegogo requires campaign owners to fufill their Perks as a part of our Terms of Service. Perks are manged solely by campaign owners; we do not guarantee or take any legal responsibility for Perk fulfillment. Contributors can use our Terms of Service as a document in the court of law, should you choose to take legal action against a campaign owner for failing to fulfill a Perk.

( emphasis mine )

So while most platforms (try to) stay away from legal responsibility, you may have recourse against the project creator directly - and you'd certainly do wise to check the terms of the crowdfunding platform of choice.