Granted that TSA has gotten over-zealous, and the naked-picture scanners are way over the top, but these things seem due for correction.
The more important thing is a long-term goal and policy of promoting self-representation and local justice in the world as a whole (and this should be done at the expense of working w/ governments which don't allow such). Now that the world isn't strongly divided into camps defined by the Cold War, the U.S. needs to make case-by-case decisions, choosing whom to work with on their own merits.
Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga on the Wii is like that --- when you beat the final boss, you get ``Episode: Unlocked World'', dialogues w/ NPCs change to reflect the world being a safer place and you run around and kill the errant critters which remain and are a nuisance but don't threaten the existence of civilization.
Biographies intended for children often focus on specific aspects of childhood, relating that to later endeavours, so the age thing should be ameliorated.
When I felt my children were a bit weak on American history I read them biographies of American Presidents, Vice Presidents and First Ladies, starting w/ George Washington, only stopping w/ Harry Truman 'cause my wife quit working nights and the evening schedule became too busy.
Somewhere a statue of Alexandre Dumas shed a tear that the name of his character who embodies revenge as an instrument of social justice and is a paragon of integrity is being used as the pseudonym for this person who helps people fake their way through life at the expense of others.
Until there's a meaningful way to store the energy in a format light enough to be carried by the suit / bearer, it's nothing more than a technology demo --- a cool one, but not useful in the field yet.
There's no need for special laws --- existing laws for
- trade dress
- patent infringement (esp. of design patents which govern the appearance of a product)
- trademark
- copyright
already cover these things quite adequately. It's tough that the corporations will have to pay lawyers to keep track of plan distribution sites and initiate suits on an infringing item-by-item basis, but they've no more grounds for interfering w/ 3D printing technology than they have to try to prevent people from purchasing a metal lathe, block steel, strips of spring steel and a set of good quality files (which one could use to make the afore-mentioned Colt 1911A1).
Wheeler's _Woodworking for Beginners_ complains that boys are too likely to buy things which their fathers would've made --- and this was published in 1899 or so.
I took up archery again a couple of years ago, making my own tackle --- started w/ bows, then strings, made a case for a takedown, working on arrows, points and nocks, and just sorted out my leatherworking tools, so gloves, armguard and quiver are next.
One thing I've found striking is the number of people who turn to the 'net forums for basic questions of technique which would've been covered in year one of shop class, or in any basic text, and who jump in w/o first studying some basic overview text even when such are readily available in a library, or public domain and on-line.
Batteries are included in the initial production weight and the battery is a small fraction of that weight --- an e-ink screen reader uses so little power that one needs to recharge every week or so, so batteries last for _years_ --- if one does replace the battery the old one contains materials which are valuable enough to warrant recycling, so the environmental impact is minimal as stated in my post.
An ebook reader which used typical batteries would be a really bad idea and if there are any such, I hope they get loaded w/ rechargeable batteries.
You're not taking into consideration the energy required to make the book, or to transport it to the marketplace. The amount of carbon sequestered in the physical pages of a book is insignificant in comparison.
And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730 w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is trivial and not considered) http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.
So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.
Right and since then they have had to go back and correct all of the older texts which have any:
- accents
- math
- foreign language text outside of basic ASCII (e.g., Greek)
- quotation marks (getting the directionality correct is non-trivial 'struth and is better done as markup so that it can be automatically converted between quote styles)
It would've been much better to've used a decent mark-up scheme such as TeX or TEI to begin with.
I specifically noted in my post that one could make such parts ``one would be able to make them (w/in the tolerances of one's fabrication machine)'' --- what isn't happening, and I doubt will ever happen --- is making them w/ 2 micrometers of precision as Lego does for their bricks.
The Shapeways link notes ``The printer resolution goes to about.1mm, but the material can change it slightly. Overall,.5 should be fine, just make sure that they are not any sort of support walls or they may get broken during shipping or printing.''.1 mm == 100 micrometers
So the fabricators are off by a factor of 50 from the precision which Lego invests in their bricks.
Find me a spec sheet for a fabricator which claims a precision measured in single digits of micrometers and I'll retract my statement, but until then I stand by it.
`` I used a 3D parametric modeling program , which produced CAD files. A mold maker then used these files to program a Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) milling machine to cut cavities into both halves of the mold. When the cavities are ready, he uses an expensive injection molding machine to inject hot ABS plastic (the same plastic used by LEGO®) into the mold with 90 tons of pressure.''
Given that Brickforge has an FAQ which says:
``We are celebrating continuing growth which means shoppers will occasionally find products out-of-stock. To assist customers we have implemented a back-in-stock notification system which allows you to receive an e-mail message the instant an item is back in stock. You should also frequent the BrickForge forums for special stock announcements. We will not respond to correspondence inquiring when certain items are back in stock. Generally, items that are not listed as Limited Editions or retired are restocked within 45 days.''
They also seem to be molding their pieces, not producing them one at a time using a fabricator --- for an example of an on-line company which does this look at www.shapeways.com:
which has a rather limited precision in comparison to Lego bricks:
``The printer resolution goes to about.1mm, but the material can change it slightly. Overall,.5 should be fine, just make sure that they are not any sort of support walls or they may get broken during shipping or printing.''.1 mm == 100 micrometers
So I believe you need to retract your claim that I am wrong.
I doubt that a fabrication machine will ever be able to create parts w/ the precision which Lego demands in their molds (tolerances are just 2 micro-meters, molds are discarded when they wear out, they use _tons_ of pressure to force the ABS plastic into every bit of the molds).
For an example of what it's like trying to use bricks which are _not_ manufactured to Lego tolerances, just pick up a Mega Bloks set (they're cheap) --- they sort of fit, but not w/ the precision of Lego bricks and they don't stay together as well.
Someone doing that in my neck of the woods would be greeted by a shotgun-toting homeowner and held for trespassing until the Sheriff showed up.
The Fourth Amendment reads:
``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.''
If there's no warrant or probable cause or justifiable reason to be there, they had better stay off my property.
No, before Windows 95, there was Windows for Pen Computing which was pen interface options for Windows 3.11 which was competing w/ Go Corp.'s PenPoint, the Moment &c.
William (who had an NCR-3125 which would dual-boot into PenPoint and Windows)
and the Panasonic Toughbook is available as a slate.
Sadly, Fujitsy quit making slates though (perhaps they'll go back to making them?) --- interestingly the selection of Windows slates has gotten so low that some people who want a larger format slate are purchasing the Axiotron Modbook (a converted Mac laptop) and installing Windows on it.
- grinding up sulfur candles purchased from the local store
- making charcoal by charring wood on a small fire outside
- making saltpeter from cow manure from local fields
Given Mac OS X's inheritance of inter-application window layering, I don't miss pop-up folders's twitch vanishing act, and placing a folder in the Dock is accessible enough as a drag-drop target, though I usually place things in the Sidebar for that.
Slashdot Mirror
A fair number of WiiWare titles have been direct ports of iPhone games --- so I guess one gets the industry experience developing for the competition.
William
Granted that TSA has gotten over-zealous, and the naked-picture scanners are way over the top, but these things seem due for correction.
The more important thing is a long-term goal and policy of promoting self-representation and local justice in the world as a whole (and this should be done at the expense of working w/ governments which don't allow such). Now that the world isn't strongly divided into camps defined by the Cold War, the U.S. needs to make case-by-case decisions, choosing whom to work with on their own merits.
Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga on the Wii is like that --- when you beat the final boss, you get ``Episode: Unlocked World'', dialogues w/ NPCs change to reflect the world being a safer place and you run around and kill the errant critters which remain and are a nuisance but don't threaten the existence of civilization.
William
The Vadem Clio was available from 3 different manufacturers --- you're possibly remembering it as the Sharp TriPad.
Or, you might be thinking of the earlier ThinkPad 360PE which had a similar hinge design.
William
Biographies intended for children often focus on specific aspects of childhood, relating that to later endeavours, so the age thing should be ameliorated.
When I felt my children were a bit weak on American history I read them biographies of American Presidents, Vice Presidents and First Ladies, starting w/ George Washington, only stopping w/ Harry Truman 'cause my wife quit working nights and the evening schedule became too busy.
Somewhere a statue of Alexandre Dumas shed a tear that the name of his character who embodies revenge as an instrument of social justice and is a paragon of integrity is being used as the pseudonym for this person who helps people fake their way through life at the expense of others.
Until there's a meaningful way to store the energy in a format light enough to be carried by the suit / bearer, it's nothing more than a technology demo --- a cool one, but not useful in the field yet.
William
Take a look at Haiti to see how efforts to control plumbing fittings so as to prevent their usage to make improvised firearms works out.
William
Like a Colt 1911A1 pistol:
http://www.sightm1911.com/blueprint/M1911A1_blue.htm
There's no need for special laws --- existing laws for
- trade dress
- patent infringement (esp. of design patents which govern the appearance of a product)
- trademark
- copyright
already cover these things quite adequately. It's tough that the corporations will have to pay lawyers to keep track of plan distribution sites and initiate suits on an infringing item-by-item basis, but they've no more grounds for interfering w/ 3D printing technology than they have to try to prevent people from purchasing a metal lathe, block steel, strips of spring steel and a set of good quality files (which one could use to make the afore-mentioned Colt 1911A1).
William
Which has been up-and-down for years.
Wheeler's _Woodworking for Beginners_ complains that boys are too likely to buy things which their fathers would've made --- and this was published in 1899 or so.
I took up archery again a couple of years ago, making my own tackle --- started w/ bows, then strings, made a case for a takedown, working on arrows, points and nocks, and just sorted out my leatherworking tools, so gloves, armguard and quiver are next.
One thing I've found striking is the number of people who turn to the 'net forums for basic questions of technique which would've been covered in year one of shop class, or in any basic text, and who jump in w/o first studying some basic overview text even when such are readily available in a library, or public domain and on-line.
William
There are a couple of projects which OCR math properly:
http://inftyreader.org/
http://research.cs.queensu.ca/drl//ffes/
William
Batteries are included in the initial production weight and the battery is a small fraction of that weight --- an e-ink screen reader uses so little power that one needs to recharge every week or so, so batteries last for _years_ --- if one does replace the battery the old one contains materials which are valuable enough to warrant recycling, so the environmental impact is minimal as stated in my post.
An ebook reader which used typical batteries would be a really bad idea and if there are any such, I hope they get loaded w/ rechargeable batteries.
William
You're not taking into consideration the energy required to make the book, or to transport it to the marketplace. The amount of carbon sequestered in the physical pages of a book is insignificant in comparison.
The production of a book releases 8.85 lbs. of CO_2:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html
Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html
And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is trivial and not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.
So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.
Right and since then they have had to go back and correct all of the older texts which have any:
- accents
- math
- foreign language text outside of basic ASCII (e.g., Greek)
- quotation marks (getting the directionality correct is non-trivial 'struth and is better done as markup so that it can be automatically converted between quote styles)
It would've been much better to've used a decent mark-up scheme such as TeX or TEI to begin with.
William
Easy, use literate programming techniques ( http://www.literateprogramming.com/ ) and then typeset them using standard TeX semantics:
a) a hyphen == ``-''
b) a dash == em-dash ``---'', en-dash ``--''
c) a minus sign == $-$ or \[-\] or \{-\} or \begin{equation}-\end{equation}
More importantly, this allows one to use the full expressability of TeX to show the algorithms which are underlying the relevant code.
William
I specifically noted in my post that one could make such parts ``one would be able to make them (w/in the tolerances of one's fabrication machine)'' --- what isn't happening, and I doubt will ever happen --- is making them w/ 2 micrometers of precision as Lego does for their bricks.
The Shapeways link notes ``The printer resolution goes to about .1mm, but the material can change it slightly. Overall, .5 should be fine, just make sure that they are not any sort of support walls or they may get broken during shipping or printing.'' .1 mm == 100 micrometers
So the fabricators are off by a factor of 50 from the precision which Lego invests in their bricks.
Find me a spec sheet for a fabricator which claims a precision measured in single digits of micrometers and I'll retract my statement, but until then I stand by it.
William
The brickarms site isn't making their products on a fabrication device though:
from their FAQ:
http://www.brickarms.com/FAQ.aspx
`` I used a 3D parametric modeling program , which produced CAD files. A mold maker then used these files to program a Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) milling machine to cut cavities into both halves of the mold. When the cavities are ready, he uses an expensive injection molding machine to inject hot ABS plastic (the same plastic used by LEGO®) into the mold with 90 tons of pressure.''
Given that Brickforge has an FAQ which says:
``We are celebrating continuing growth which means shoppers will occasionally find products out-of-stock. To assist customers we have implemented a back-in-stock notification system which allows you to receive an e-mail message the instant an item is back in stock. You should also frequent the BrickForge forums for special stock announcements. We will not respond to correspondence inquiring when certain items are back in stock. Generally, items that are not listed as Limited Editions or retired are restocked within 45 days.''
They also seem to be molding their pieces, not producing them one at a time using a fabricator --- for an example of an on-line company which does this look at www.shapeways.com:
which has a rather limited precision in comparison to Lego bricks:
http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=tree&goto=1339&#page_top
``The printer resolution goes to about .1mm, but the material can change it slightly. Overall, .5 should be fine, just make sure that they are not any sort of support walls or they may get broken during shipping or printing.'' .1 mm == 100 micrometers
So I believe you need to retract your claim that I am wrong.
William
If you want to directly interact w/ your documents on-screen get an Axiotron ModBook:
http://www.axiotron.com/
or a Wacom Cintiq:
http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/cintiq-12wx.php
William
I doubt that a fabrication machine will ever be able to create parts w/ the precision which Lego demands in their molds (tolerances are just 2 micro-meters, molds are discarded when they wear out, they use _tons_ of pressure to force the ABS plastic into every bit of the molds).
That said, so long as the bricks don't infringe on any Lego trademarks (this varies by one's legal locality, see the article on the recent EU case http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/11/lego-loses-eu-trademark-on-bricks-prepares-for-clone-wars.ars ), one would be able to make them (w/in the tolerances of one's fabrication machine).
For an example of what it's like trying to use bricks which are _not_ manufactured to Lego tolerances, just pick up a Mega Bloks set (they're cheap) --- they sort of fit, but not w/ the precision of Lego bricks and they don't stay together as well.
And they manage to place such a device into my vehicle on my property w/o looking at things how?
No warrant or invitation == trespassing == you can talk it over w/ the Sheriff.
Someone doing that in my neck of the woods would be greeted by a shotgun-toting homeowner and held for trespassing until the Sheriff showed up.
The Fourth Amendment reads:
``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.''
If there's no warrant or probable cause or justifiable reason to be there, they had better stay off my property.
No, before Windows 95, there was Windows for Pen Computing which was pen interface options for Windows 3.11 which was competing w/ Go Corp.'s PenPoint, the Moment &c.
William
(who had an NCR-3125 which would dual-boot into PenPoint and Windows)
Motion has 3 models available:
http://www.motioncomputing.com/
There's the Archos 9:
http://www.archos.com/products/tw/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en
and the Samsung Q1EX:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP-Q1EX-FA01US
and the Panasonic Toughbook is available as a slate.
Sadly, Fujitsy quit making slates though (perhaps they'll go back to making them?) --- interestingly the selection of Windows slates has gotten so low that some people who want a larger format slate are purchasing the Axiotron Modbook (a converted Mac laptop) and installing Windows on it.
William
When I was a kid, I made gunpowder by:
- grinding up sulfur candles purchased from the local store
- making charcoal by charring wood on a small fire outside
- making saltpeter from cow manure from local fields
So get your kid a book like:
http://www.amazon.com/Do---Yourself-Gunpowder-Cookbook/dp/0873646754/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285872731&sr=1-1
Given Mac OS X's inheritance of inter-application window layering, I don't miss pop-up folders's twitch vanishing act, and placing a folder in the Dock is accessible enough as a drag-drop target, though I usually place things in the Sidebar for that.