3D printing is a pretty poor name. It's all additive techniques, of which there are at least six major types, I think. And they go from inexpensive hobbyist machines to over a million dollars.
They're useful technologies, but I think people are getting ahead of themselves. The focus should be on doing things that couldn't be done as well before, not making existing things, but more poorly and more expensively and thinking that's going to change the world. There are some uses though, tor example, I think GE has an turbine engine injector design that's now one piece instead of 23 pieces when done with conventional machining. In the GE case, it's a benefit, less complexity, less weight. Making a plastic tape measure with plastic tape, that looks like a waste of material & time.
Yeah, metric drill bits are harder to find. I generally use number & letter gauge drills and just use the closest one. For my needs, the tiny difference is negligible. But I don't make aerospace & government parts, if so, then I'd use the specified size. A lot of cities seem to have a nearby machine tool supplier (there's two in my nearby mid-sized city), and they'll sell you just about any variation of metric tooling you want.
The consumer accessible UV printers don't do flexible items yet. I don't know what method the Connex uses, I guess it makes sense it's UV. So it may be a matter of waiting for the material technology to go down in price. The current cheapest I've seen is the material costs $50 a liter for a rigid material, and that material isn't very good that I've seen.
The technology is overhyped, A 3D printer makes you a product designer any more than a laser printer didn't made you a newsletter editor in the 80's.
One other reason I say that is when I see how fashion designers design their ridiculous stuff and "3D print" it. To suggest that people want to wear a fused plastic dress and call it high fashion is some serious encroachment on the story of the emperor's new clothing. Some of the items are a giant shoulder thing that might as well be an oversize tiara. Some of the works make the British Royal family look sane.
Outside of some niches, it's still mostly a rapid prototyping technology. That's what I use it for.
Yeah, after a certain point, the network effect takes over. That doesn't answer how Facebook got to be big enough for network effect to dominate. Or maybe network effect started at the beginning, because it was school-by-school.
In fact, MySpace is only about 6 months newer, and I think was dominant for a while. It seems like maybe Facebook grew from people becoming dissatisfied with MySpace. I don't think we have seen a similar service growing considerably from dissatisfied Facebook users.
We used to have social centralization, the difference now is that there are a lot more choices. Decades ago, it might have been "everyone watching the same channel", a bit before that, "listening to the same station".
Still, I'm not convinced that wireless will necessarily be a competitive solution to getting internet to the home, except as a second tier option.
Even if wireless can eventually get you 100x more data than current wireless, future fiber & cable will probably also be 100x that of current fiber and cable. Expectations & demands will probably scale up such that wireless might still not be good enough for home internet access except for a small segment of the population, or those that just simply don't have any choice. Already, I'm seeing comments from people saying that 6/1 Mbps is holding them back.
I think Netflix doubling prices was really just setting up Instant as a separate service. It's unreasonable to expect that the free, then later, $4 instant add-on was going to continue for too long. I wasn't happy with it though, so I dumped the discs.
They do lose content, but they also constantly add new. I imagine they don't have much choice without paying a lot more.
It would be nice if channels were unbundled, but I think that's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The idea of linear channels just seems increasingly antiquated. Yeah, there's live events, but the reasons for dedicating a specific band for them are diminishing when events can be streamed live.
Yes. A new Cessna 172 Skyhawk probably cost $310,000 or more.
Even renting an older (though nice and very well-maintained) airplane is $90/hr, which at least includes fuel.
Some people kit-build planes, but that's a lot of work and it all has to be done and maintained right.
Insurance is expensive. Renting a hangar stall is expensive. Continuing education is expensive.
Regulations don't help, though there are low-regulation categories. Those are a considerably higher risk category because some of the people that take advantage of the lower barrier to entry are a bit more lax in doing things properly.
Learning to fly often isn't a good career move because pilots are now generally paid poorly.
One really has to want to fly badly, especially to give up several other hobbies to afford flying.
I think you may have a mistaken impression of corporate structures. I don't think many corporations would allow electrical engineers have that kind of control unless said electrical engineer started the company.
I also doubt Lenovo or HP engineers would be in a position to point fingers, their consumer PCs aren't very good either, criticizing competition's build quality won't do them any favors when it invites reciprocation.
Clipping waveforms is a problem that can also ruin expensive speakers too.
And yet people still listen to the crap when there are plenty of easy alternatives - including podcasts & personal music collections. I really don't get it. Sports and other live events are the only decent reasons to turn on the radio.
I really cringe at how often music is repeated on a music radio station, it's the same 20 songs repeated every hour or something like that.
Also, Cheetos & mechanical keyboards should be a worse combination, hygenically speaking and reliability speaking, given how many crevices there are in a keyboard. So if Cheetos is supposed to be a problem with touch screen, then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?
Goofy naming doesn't seem to prevent a product or service from getting popular, witness Wii and iPad. I think DDG is a better name than those of web services that add or drop vowels.
That is a long tail kind of market, and brick and mortar retail is generally incompatible with filling long tail demand, unless you have a very large, dense city where you can find a customer base for niche items.
Clearly, the term "lifetime" should be abandoned. As you say, it's too vague to be of use, and frankly, I ignore that, it's not a selling point for that reason. Along similar lines, in practice, I generally find that a lifetime warranty to be of less value than a warranty of specifically defined duration.
Under no circumstances is it realistic to assign a lifetime warranty of an electronic device to the life of the owner. It's clearly a hyperbolic stretch, but I'd almost be concerned that it would give a perverse incentive to rig the device to kill the owner in the case of failure.
I have a laser engraver and I've tried to cut what I think is run of the mill MDO. It really doesn't go very well, but it didn't seem dangerous either. I think you probably need to pump pure oxygen to get a flame.
I don't know about the temperature stability issue, I don't expect to use a laser engraver in extreme temperatures.
That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works. I don't see this as hypocrisy on the part of Netflix, Netflix owns very little content. If the studios did it, then OK, I see that as hypocrisy in a way. But people complaining that someone stole something from thieves? That's a different kind of special right there.
I'll go with "not all Netflix devices use Silverlight". I would bet that Silverlight is a minority of Netflix's traffic. I'm pretty sure the set-top boxes, game consoles and optical disc players with Netflix aren't using Silverlight. Wii and PS3 doesn't use it. I know Netflix iOS doesn't use Silverlight in a conventional sense, if at all. I don't even use my computers to watch Netflix, it's a console or a set-top box.
Sometimes the shoe fits. That said, Google and their lawyers would never say that, they'll have a much more diplomatic way of explaining how the technology works.
We do get too many powerful people that legislate or litigate on technology issues despite not understanding anything about the technology, yet they feel plenty qualified to make such decisions.
Even considering going back to a 40+ year-old design is an admission of failure - pretty typical for government funded projects, when compared to the private sector.
The 747 is still being made, 43 years after its first flight in 1969, the year of the first Moon rocket. The 737 is still being made, first flight, 1967. Sure, they're different now, but the fundamental design is still there. They're still competitive with much newer designs, otherwise they wouldn't be offered anymore.
I'm not sure where the DC-3 comparison comes in, is there a new regime of rocket engine that compares with going from rotary piston prop to jet engine? Even SpaceX's home-built Merlin engine isn't some fancy design that supersedes all engines before it, at least not in the manner from piston to jet.
I'm not sure where the leap from 40 years difference and 60 years in your comment.
Slashdot Mirror
3D printing is a pretty poor name. It's all additive techniques, of which there are at least six major types, I think. And they go from inexpensive hobbyist machines to over a million dollars.
They're useful technologies, but I think people are getting ahead of themselves. The focus should be on doing things that couldn't be done as well before, not making existing things, but more poorly and more expensively and thinking that's going to change the world. There are some uses though, tor example, I think GE has an turbine engine injector design that's now one piece instead of 23 pieces when done with conventional machining. In the GE case, it's a benefit, less complexity, less weight. Making a plastic tape measure with plastic tape, that looks like a waste of material & time.
Yeah, metric drill bits are harder to find. I generally use number & letter gauge drills and just use the closest one. For my needs, the tiny difference is negligible. But I don't make aerospace & government parts, if so, then I'd use the specified size. A lot of cities seem to have a nearby machine tool supplier (there's two in my nearby mid-sized city), and they'll sell you just about any variation of metric tooling you want.
The Peachy won't make that, it is too small.
The consumer accessible UV printers don't do flexible items yet. I don't know what method the Connex uses, I guess it makes sense it's UV. So it may be a matter of waiting for the material technology to go down in price. The current cheapest I've seen is the material costs $50 a liter for a rigid material, and that material isn't very good that I've seen.
The technology is overhyped, A 3D printer makes you a product designer any more than a laser printer didn't made you a newsletter editor in the 80's.
One other reason I say that is when I see how fashion designers design their ridiculous stuff and "3D print" it. To suggest that people want to wear a fused plastic dress and call it high fashion is some serious encroachment on the story of the emperor's new clothing. Some of the items are a giant shoulder thing that might as well be an oversize tiara. Some of the works make the British Royal family look sane.
Outside of some niches, it's still mostly a rapid prototyping technology. That's what I use it for.
Yeah, after a certain point, the network effect takes over. That doesn't answer how Facebook got to be big enough for network effect to dominate. Or maybe network effect started at the beginning, because it was school-by-school.
In fact, MySpace is only about 6 months newer, and I think was dominant for a while. It seems like maybe Facebook grew from people becoming dissatisfied with MySpace. I don't think we have seen a similar service growing considerably from dissatisfied Facebook users.
We used to have social centralization, the difference now is that there are a lot more choices. Decades ago, it might have been "everyone watching the same channel", a bit before that, "listening to the same station".
Still, I'm not convinced that wireless will necessarily be a competitive solution to getting internet to the home, except as a second tier option.
Even if wireless can eventually get you 100x more data than current wireless, future fiber & cable will probably also be 100x that of current fiber and cable. Expectations & demands will probably scale up such that wireless might still not be good enough for home internet access except for a small segment of the population, or those that just simply don't have any choice. Already, I'm seeing comments from people saying that 6/1 Mbps is holding them back.
Do any LTE services have reasonable data rates? The 5GB package from Verizon isn't going to take a whole lot of video use.
FTTH might help, but it might just be another duopoly situation.
I think Netflix doubling prices was really just setting up Instant as a separate service. It's unreasonable to expect that the free, then later, $4 instant add-on was going to continue for too long. I wasn't happy with it though, so I dumped the discs.
They do lose content, but they also constantly add new. I imagine they don't have much choice without paying a lot more.
It would be nice if channels were unbundled, but I think that's just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The idea of linear channels just seems increasingly antiquated. Yeah, there's live events, but the reasons for dedicating a specific band for them are diminishing when events can be streamed live.
Yes. A new Cessna 172 Skyhawk probably cost $310,000 or more.
Even renting an older (though nice and very well-maintained) airplane is $90/hr, which at least includes fuel.
Some people kit-build planes, but that's a lot of work and it all has to be done and maintained right.
Insurance is expensive. Renting a hangar stall is expensive. Continuing education is expensive.
Regulations don't help, though there are low-regulation categories. Those are a considerably higher risk category because some of the people that take advantage of the lower barrier to entry are a bit more lax in doing things properly.
Learning to fly often isn't a good career move because pilots are now generally paid poorly.
One really has to want to fly badly, especially to give up several other hobbies to afford flying.
I think you may have a mistaken impression of corporate structures. I don't think many corporations would allow electrical engineers have that kind of control unless said electrical engineer started the company.
I also doubt Lenovo or HP engineers would be in a position to point fingers, their consumer PCs aren't very good either, criticizing competition's build quality won't do them any favors when it invites reciprocation.
Clipping waveforms is a problem that can also ruin expensive speakers too.
"Slashdot combines editor quality control and insight with crowd-sourced harvesting"
but... there is little to no editor quality control on Slashdot. At least Rob got the advertorial feature of Slashdot used to his personal benefit.
I get that poverty in the US is an epidemic, but your 40% and 50% figures seem very inflated. Citation, please?
I have nothing against the creators, but when one broadcast format gets preferential treatment over another, I don't see how that serves anyone.
And yet people still listen to the crap when there are plenty of easy alternatives - including podcasts & personal music collections. I really don't get it. Sports and other live events are the only decent reasons to turn on the radio.
I really cringe at how often music is repeated on a music radio station, it's the same 20 songs repeated every hour or something like that.
Also, Cheetos & mechanical keyboards should be a worse combination, hygenically speaking and reliability speaking, given how many crevices there are in a keyboard. So if Cheetos is supposed to be a problem with touch screen, then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?
Goofy naming doesn't seem to prevent a product or service from getting popular, witness Wii and iPad. I think DDG is a better name than those of web services that add or drop vowels.
That is a long tail kind of market, and brick and mortar retail is generally incompatible with filling long tail demand, unless you have a very large, dense city where you can find a customer base for niche items.
Clearly, the term "lifetime" should be abandoned. As you say, it's too vague to be of use, and frankly, I ignore that, it's not a selling point for that reason. Along similar lines, in practice, I generally find that a lifetime warranty to be of less value than a warranty of specifically defined duration.
Under no circumstances is it realistic to assign a lifetime warranty of an electronic device to the life of the owner. It's clearly a hyperbolic stretch, but I'd almost be concerned that it would give a perverse incentive to rig the device to kill the owner in the case of failure.
I have a laser engraver and I've tried to cut what I think is run of the mill MDO. It really doesn't go very well, but it didn't seem dangerous either. I think you probably need to pump pure oxygen to get a flame.
I don't know about the temperature stability issue, I don't expect to use a laser engraver in extreme temperatures.
That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works. I don't see this as hypocrisy on the part of Netflix, Netflix owns very little content. If the studios did it, then OK, I see that as hypocrisy in a way. But people complaining that someone stole something from thieves? That's a different kind of special right there.
I'll go with "not all Netflix devices use Silverlight". I would bet that Silverlight is a minority of Netflix's traffic. I'm pretty sure the set-top boxes, game consoles and optical disc players with Netflix aren't using Silverlight. Wii and PS3 doesn't use it. I know Netflix iOS doesn't use Silverlight in a conventional sense, if at all. I don't even use my computers to watch Netflix, it's a console or a set-top box.
You don't have to use IE on the Internet, so it shouldn't matter whether IE is on your computer.
I gave up on Windows 2000 two or three years ago when most developers stopped supporting it and compatibility quality gradually degraded as a result.
Good user habits are important, but it's not a comprehensive solution. For one, even reputable sites get hacked.
People use Silverlight?
Sometimes the shoe fits. That said, Google and their lawyers would never say that, they'll have a much more diplomatic way of explaining how the technology works.
We do get too many powerful people that legislate or litigate on technology issues despite not understanding anything about the technology, yet they feel plenty qualified to make such decisions.
Even considering going back to a 40+ year-old design is an admission of failure - pretty typical for government funded projects, when compared to the private sector.
The 747 is still being made, 43 years after its first flight in 1969, the year of the first Moon rocket. The 737 is still being made, first flight, 1967. Sure, they're different now, but the fundamental design is still there. They're still competitive with much newer designs, otherwise they wouldn't be offered anymore.
I'm not sure where the DC-3 comparison comes in, is there a new regime of rocket engine that compares with going from rotary piston prop to jet engine? Even SpaceX's home-built Merlin engine isn't some fancy design that supersedes all engines before it, at least not in the manner from piston to jet.
I'm not sure where the leap from 40 years difference and 60 years in your comment.