The Mars rovers were amazingly successful and continued to function well longer than anyone expected. It was a minor miracle that they even survived the landing and everything deployed as planned. They got so much data from the rovers they actually made an IMAX movie with the gigapixel imagery! Scientists have found tons of evidence of water and more, but they are extremely hesitant to discuss because no one wants to be the scientist ridiculed for saying aliens existed on Mars. Here's an article that discusses a little - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4480097/
The idea of welcoming rejection, in order to not be afraid of it, has been inspiring me a lot lately in both personal and startup life. I saw the light when I was taking improv class and realizing that you can only really do improv if you embrace looking stupid. It ends up I look stupid loads of times inadvertently so I might as well go for it.
Foursquare comes out of the idea of playing virtual games out in the every day world. What happens often when people are playing a game is someone gets hurt and then the fun is ruined for everyone.
It all sort of reminds me of Amusing Ourselves to Death where we keep giving up freedom for the sake of entertainment. Where is Neil Postman when you need him?
Yeah I noticed that. Does that mean that Sun can start creating the runtime again? Does that also mean I can skip the hassle of going to Apple Dev center when I want to download the JRE?