Slashdot Mirror

If anyone thinks they would just give him back I have a one of these to sell you. http://www.fleetfarm.com/detai...

Snowden is a minor annoyance in russia. He has said so himself. However, Russia has a long history of looking bad in pretty much all aspects. Keeping Snowden makes them look slightly good. It really at this point is his only bargaining chip.

He did a majorly bad thing. He knows it. He is cool with that. I have watched the interviews. He has made it 'good' in his mind. What he also did was show that our own organizations are not doing good things. They regularly fail to follow our constitution and the 'channels' to correct it do not work at all. He didnt reveal anything that our foes didnt already know. The only people who didnt know was the American people. The only ones who suspected were called conspiracy theorists. Now all I ask is he comes back and gets a fair trial. That is it. A *fair* trial. It will also probably be a trial where he is convicted of breaking the law. Because he did. He will then spend a long time in jail. Anyone who thinks different is deluding themselves.

A reasonable MIG welder isn't that expensive. Granted Hobart is a Miller with some corners cut (example: mine doesn't have a thermal switch for the fan so the fan just runs all the time) but they are well made. For what I weld even the smallest ones are overkill. Unlike some of the really cheap crap they are reliable and I gather that Lincoln Electric also offers some small ones now so just check around you and get one that does what you need, as the Miller vs. Lincoln fight makes Vi vs. Emacs fight seem halfhearted.

I view 3d printers now like welders from 30 years ago. You could get some consumer ones but they weren't good but someone could produce things with them and at the professional level there were great ones. I figure by the time I retire 3d printers will likely be like welders now where one can get pretty nice ones that offer professional quality but with fewer features for a good price.

True, at the moment they are still somewhat disapointing, but that is to be expected when you are scaling machines that just a few years cost tens of thousands of dollars down to something consumers can play with.

Usually the quality produced between a commercial/industrial device and consumer one is comparable with other devices with the biggest difference being the size and power requirements for other tools. Granted when you go down to the bottom of the barrel they will suck but for things like welders, plasma cutters, milling machines, and other machine tools this seems to hold, yet a commercial 3d printer produces vastly better quality than a consumer one. I recently decided to spend some money and get a good consumer plasma cutter since they have experienced a dramatic drop in price similar to other tools like what I mentioned. It works great and the results are very good, but if I had bought a current 3D printer for a similar amount I would be very disappointed with it.

That said I could probably find uses for a 3D printer now but it would be more of a toy than anything else. I welcome people tinkering and working with them now as it does drive the market both in quality and price but I will wait until I can get one that will print in metal with very tight tolerances.

Yes a mig welder could be miniaturized further but you wouldn't want it. For the best quality work you will want to be running gas shielded not flux core wire and thus need rather large tanks since this will probably take a while. Now add in that you need a good transformer for the welder as well as good tensioners and drive motors and it isn't going to be getting much smaller. There are already some cheap crappy ones available and while they may work out of the box the question is if they will work for any length of time. Good welders are rather large and heavy, the one I have is about as small and light as one can be made and not be trash and I have the add on gas kit.

It's not like loading ammo is hard, and bullets are probably the easiest things for these machines to print.

Don't go after the dog they don't really know any better best to go after the owner. Super soaker filled with deer piss diluted with water. Hell if you just dumped a bunch of that deer piss on the ground the dog would probably roll in it and love every moment of it and the owner would have to deal with smelly dog. For that matter maybe just spread some manure around there as well since the dog will roll around in that too.

Only wading boots, I was thinking more along the lines of chest waders.

If you really want to save your self some money buy a bunch of canning supplies and learn how to can food your self. I can lots of stuff and this weekend I canned ~2 gallons of homemade pasta sauce, the previous weekend I canned up ~5 gallons of chile, and next weekend I am planning on making and canning a bunch of beef and Guinness stew. I will also can soups, other sauces, veggies, pickles, pickled peppers, jelly, etc. Typically they will keep for a over a year when stored in a cool dark place (basement closet) and it keeps my freezer space open. I end up splitting 1/4 of cow and 1/4 of a bison each year with my father as well as usually getting a deer so freezer space is a premium and before the next year's meat arrives I use the lower quality cuts (round steak and chuck roast) in stew and chile so that it won't get buried in the freezer. Also it is a great use of the fresh produce I grow in the garden so that it also doesn't go to waste. As an added benefit I have good food ready made (just reheat) that I can use when I don't feel like cooking fresh food. Over the course of the year my family will consume the food I canned so it's not like I have some retarded stockpile of food but if we lost power or had some disaster that lasted a few weeks we wouldn't have any problems. I also have a fair amount of tinned food that I bought at the store like some soups and baked beans (seriously why not stock up when it goes on sale if you actually eat it) as well as dried pasta that keeps just fine on the the pantry shelf. There are some foods that I buy in the grocery store that come in MRE packing but that is a brand of Indian food that is like $1.25 per package and one pack is a meal. They have various curries as well as rice dishes so if you have 2 people (or are really hungry) you make up a bag of rice and a bag of curry. One of the benefits I discovered about the Indian food in a bag is you can cook it while still in the bag so you don't even need potable water. This has come in handy when I last went up to the BWCA and brought some along instead of only relying on the traditional dehydrated, or packaged food the guide companies provide you with (even MREs would be a vast improvement over dehydrated powdered scrambled eggs).

if commercial sets are too tame, there's always the internets (note archive.org link)

buy chemicals here (...while you can -- the feds are actively working to shut this guy down)

btw, chemistry sets were lame even 30 years ago. the chemicals they came with were things like alum, lime, aspirin, melting salt

and a link to click on if you fear your government more than terrorism (vote in the PRIMARY dammit -- before the repub. machine grinds up Paul and spits him out; like the dem. machine did to howard dean)