I wonder if it's more subtle than that - if your paper has associated source code, then it's likely that people reading it might try it out, and the ideas that you've presented will stick around more than a short paper with no follow up material.
In other words, papers are only a short glimpse into your research, presenting code allows an interested reader to look deeper, and means that they're more likely to remember what you've done, and cite it later.
I don't think that they even expect them to be predictors of importance or popularity. The "best paper" award can give a hint of temporary fashions or about what seemed to be interesting concepts/works at a certain point in time. That's why it seems especially interesting to see them compared with the "top cited" in these charts.
I'm nowhere near to be techno-apocalyptic, but I just thought that from a "1984" point of view it could be a tool to monitor activities without no permission at all.
And wearing a tin foil hat just makes you a better reflector!
Anyway, if you look up through-wall radar detection, most of the implementations use S-band radar, and it is probably safe to assume that it's already been figured out how to use wifi stations and devices already in place emitting signals to each other, rather than always needing to bring additional equipment.
With regard to privacy though, it seems like it would be data and computationally intensive to track the movements of people in a large number of houses.
Let's say that a hypothetical application could only detect velocities away from or toward the base station, but no directional information. With each movement you make it would build a set of hypotheses about your location. Then when you make another movement, it would need to branch out, and create an entire set of hypotheses for each hypothesis in the previous set, and so on with each movement. While the program could abandon entire branches when they showed you walking through a wall, it would still grow very quickly.
Though it is possible to mine data of cell phone locations and CC television cameras after the fact, it seems like (if my understanding of how the technology would work is anything near reality) it is simply too difficult to collect a lot of information about people's movements in their homes without a specific prior reason to justify the expense.
Anyway, perhaps rather than tinfoil hats, people worried about surveillance should hang lots of mobile sculptures in their houses to create confounding noise instead.
Don't you think that specific industries may need specific tools that Kickstarter doesn't provide?
And the "return" is absolutely different...
I think that these simple things are the sparkle to create the need for separated platforms.
However, many of these alternative croudfunding platforms are not implementing any difference. And there I will support your point of view, there is no need to do that. In fact, it should be better to take advantage of Kickstarter's moment of inertia.
I can't really think of a good example of a tool that is needed to crowdfund a project in a specific industry.. but this is the best argument I've heard and I can imagine something like this actually actually adding some value.
There are many things I'd expect as such tools/customisations... A pair of simple examples:
* Specialised support: the croudfunding platform could offer legal and strategic support in the narrow field they are focusing. I think Kickstarter cannot embrace all industries even if they try.
* Specialised tools and rules: Each platform must have extremely distinct interactions with the backers and product outcomes. In an academic platform (as the one being discussed) I'd expect some tools for scientific divulgation (which must be a mandatory "return" from crowdsourced research projects) and collaboration (which must be extraordinarily stimulated). I think Kickstarter will never consider/establish these rules/tools.
Having to depend on Universities or any other institution for security's sake seems to be a little bit restrictive. Individual or non-institutionalized research should be acceptable. Responsibility with project backers shouldn't depend on that, don't you think? There should be a legal contract anyway.
However, I don't think that this will be the most common profile looking for funding.
I'm not way ahead of you (currently I'm finishing my PhD), but I'll try to help you because at some point I had the same question.
I sticked to the CS degree. Let me argue that by answering some of your specific reasons:
1a) Grading system is kind of broken, it is absolutely true. It is too tempting for students to focus on grades rather than on learning. But that is until you realise that. Now you can do both! It is good you've noticed it before your degree ends. From now onwards, you'll be able to combine learning and passing exams. In fact, I you do so, while learning, rules to pass the exam will become easier to understand.
2a) They may o may not be teaching practical stuff, but remember that practical stuff usually has a shot live span. Learning different stuff at the degree will exercise you to be able to adapt to any future stuff. Besides, you should be able to appreciate all non-academic things that you learn while you are at the faculty.
1b) The world shouldn't be like this, but maybe in the future some people will judge (and pay) you by your résumé rather than your abilities… but, whether you get the degree or not I'd urge you to run away from that kind of people. There will be more opportunities in CS market.
3b) One of the many evaluations of a degree is that you must show you can commit to all adversities (grading system, professors, team work, etc.). You must prove that you know how to get to the end of any journey you've begun. Many people will look for that. However, the world is also full of happy successful academy dropouts and people who never get to it from the beginning. You can prove your value without academia.
Assignments might not always be geared towards something useful, but sometimes you can go above and beyond the requirements to make a boring assignment interesting.
For example, I'm taking a class on web applications. One of the assignments was to establish a website that supports PHP and MySQL. For this assignment, all we really HAD to do was sign up for web hosting, although I had zero web experience, I thought it sounded kind of boring. Instead, I rented a VPS for the first time, registered a domain name, and taught myself how to install and configure a LAMP stack. I took an otherwise useless assignment, and turned it into something fun, interesting, and useful.
