No, but it should. That's the point. If the public paid for it, the public should have open access to it.
No, that isn't the point. The point is to have good peer-reviewed science that is available to anyone for a nominal fee. You seem to be confusing "open access" with "free as in beer."
There is no valid societal or ethical reason private publishers should have a stranglehold on publicly-funded research.
There is no strangle hold. That is a slashdot-ism. It costs journals money to review articles and publish them. Paying $15 for a scientific journal article isn't a strangle hold.
At first, this whole article sounds like nonsense. But I think I figured out the key mistake here:
...aims a laser at an aircraft
This is about drones!
Surely they don't mean commercial planes. It doesn't make sense that a normal hand-held laser pointer could track a 700mph airplane 30,000 feet away, when it has no ground facing windows. Police and medevac helicopters are the current issue. They fly low, at night, over populated areas. But I wonder if part of the goal here is to nip this in the bud before police drones become a regular site in the sky.
when the journal you published it in copyrighted and paywalled it, and the public has no ready access?
That is public access. Any member of the public can obtain it by simply buying the article, or a subscription. "Public access" doesn't always mean "must provide everyone a free copy."
Why do they not use the same std library implementation? LLVM is a compiler, it can compile the same std library code. If the LLVM designers wanted to improve it, it was GPL with the library extension so at first glance it seems like they could have used it.
I know of IBM as a: - Desktop PC manufacturer - Server manufacturer - Chip manufacturer
If they don't have those 3 things any more, then what are they? To my knowledge, IBM has some of the best fabs in the world. It's amazing to me that this is not part of their core business. This is... wow... just wow.
...less important than access to (insert major corporation name here>'s customer portal website.
I don't think it is fair to call that QOS. QOS is for distinguishing between packets that are realtime and packets that are not. When things are busy, prioritize VOIP packets over the email.
Note: I'm not saying that ISPs will do so. But it technologically can be done.
I'm glad someone finally asked this, because I was confused on this the first few headlines on this topic.
What baffles me is why can't they just open up this computer and see how it works?
The problem, as usual, is badly written headlines and summaries. It's not a literal black box. It's not actually in disguise. The scientists know what is inside and what it does. That isn't the problem. The problem is that we aren't sure we understand how those parts actually function. We aren't sure if the quantum effect he designers were trying to take advantage of is actually happening. The real question is "Does this design actually entangle photons and use quantum mechanics, or can it be understood to work within the realm of classical physics?"
The ultimate test is to see if it can do the annealing calculations faster than a classical computer could.
The word emulator in the context of the English language is different from the meaning of the word emulator in the context of computers. With computers, an API is not an emulator. An emulator is necessarily a virtual machine.
Don't use the dictionary definition for a technical term. If you insist on doing so, I will take a drive to your home and ask you to plug in your mouse.
Be careful here. We must distinguish the difference between "extreme" and "principled."
Snowden's initial leak showed violations of the law and the constitution. If that was his only leak, lots more people would call him a whistleblower. But other leaks by Snowden show perfectly good, legal, constitutional countintelligence programs. It is perfectly valid to say he is a whistleblower for one leak but a traitor for the other. THAT ISN'T NUANCE.
Nuance is "a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound." If one leak was completely black, and another completely white, we should not mix them together and call the result gray and nuanced. If someone murders person A then saves person B, we don't compromise and call it manslaughter. We say they are guilty on one count, and not guilty on another. We need to look at Snowden this way.
Do we have a lack of nuance, or a lack of principles?
In the US, we have a constitution that lays down the basic theoretical philosophical principles of government. People who react loudly when the government violates those rules are principled. Principled means "acting in accordance with morality and showing recognition of right and wrong based on a given set of rules." Principled is not the same as extreme. Being principled is a good thing. If you are outraged by what the NSA did, do not let someone label you as "extreme" in order to bargain you away from your beliefs.
But we have people in this nation who want to be able to get away with this stuff, while still claiming to follow the rules. They want the issue to look "nuanced," so that there is wiggle room to violate the principles. Do not let the "nuanced" view turn into a slippery slope that the government uses to skirt the law and erode the constitution.
From the article:
Saying that there may be some middle ground or grey area is seen as a sign of weakness, of moving off the party line.
That is true. People need to be able to change their opinions, or not forced down an extreme side. That tendency is why we have these two ridiculous parties in America. People follow banners more strongly than they follow principles. But Snowden's leaks are not about party. It isn't flip-flopping to say leak A is one thing and leak B is another. These leaks are about our principles. This is not the time to back down. Back down on gray things like immigration, healthcare, spending, and tax codes. But for this one, follow the principles.
As snarky as that comment is, it rings true. The impact of the Nobel Peace Prize has been diluted by awarding it to someone as an attempt to motivate them, rather than based on what they actually did. Perhaps if Obama goes on to earn that prize after the fact then it might restore the prize's meaning to some degree.
FWIW, I too have had success with Monoprice items. I suspect that Monoprice components are often the same as the brand name components, with a different outer shell, much like store branded electronics.
Specifically, I had a LAN party and I ordered a brand name Gigabit switch and a Monoprice Gigabit switch. Both worked as designed. The Monoprice one had the benefit that the case was flat, so it was more stackable than some of the fancier case designs.
That, I think, is actually a major problem. Low-priced amateur 3D printers are high-maintenance things and half the time, things don't go right.
This really is a solved problem, just not in the low-cost market.
I have a Makerbot Replicator at home, which is unreliable. My employer has a Stratasys. It requires only yearly maintenance, and it never fails a print. When I described my Makerbot woes to the mechanical engineers here at work, they were all surprised. They just thought of the devices as being reliable like office printers. Things like prints not sticking, some shapes not being printable, things coming out the wrong size, or manually calibrating were all news to them. The Stratasys control panel doesn't even let you change slicing settings or temperature settings. It just works.
I learned that there is a reason for that 100k+ price tag.
In true Dell tradition, it will come with some additional features not present in the regular Makerbot Replicators:
* The custom Dell firmware will be the same as the regular Makerbot firmware, but will come with additional Dell branded support features that make your printer go 1/2 the speed. You can however, uninstall these tools.
* It will come with free red filament, a 30-day free trial blue filament, a "light" green filament. The red filament will not be compatible with your new 3D printer. The blue filament will automatically bill your credit card after 30 days even if you have not used it. The "light" green filament is half the diameter of the "full" green filament and will cause your prints to break. You can optionally upgrade this to the "full" green filament for half price.
I would love to see the insides of this thing. The biggest problem I see is that the mixing process requires you to push all the plastic out of the extruder and prime it again with the new filaments. That would waste a lot of plastic at each color change. So if you printed something with multiple colors per layer, it would waste a lot lot of plastic.
So a traditional 2D printer manufacturer shouldn't go to CES either then? I mean, people who would use such a thing would be producing, not consuming.
touché! Were there any 2D printers there? I didn't think that kind of thing would be show-offy enough.
And besides, a 2D printer requires that you know how to design that print out too.
Yes, but the 2D design is much easier. I find that anyone can learn how to design a useful 2D object, and has cause to do so. Hence the signs/banners example. 3D objects are a whole other dimension, pun intended. I suppose, if and when the day comes that 3D design software is as easy to use as 2D design software today, then that would change the outlook. I'm not sure that is possible though. Time will tell...
So what would the consumer use the 3D printer for? You gave 2 examples: copying objects with a 3D scanner, and downloading objects off the internet.
I'm not sure how useful the first is for the consumer. Presuming that a 3D scanner will only ever be able to copy static objects, nothing with moving parts. So they could copy parts, perhaps to fix things. EZ drywall repair maybe? Fix that broken picture frame, coat hanger, or curtain rod? Well... assuming it isn't so broken that the copy won't be broken too. Or that it is easy to fix the part digitally. I'm not so sure on that though. It might work for simple toys or game pieces.
The second case is downloading parts online seems more useful to me. You could print snap-together things that can move. So there you get your guns, toys, etc. Just pay a licensing fee per print. I could see manufacturers putting out the 3D design of something rather than making the part. But there are lots and lots of obstacles there, so it might not ever be worth doing. Time will tell.
It's funny because you point out that 2D printers are dying, which I notice too. Long ago: "Print Shop" was the killer app for a PC. Everyone wanted a computer + a dot matrix printer so they could maker banners and signs. I don't see people doing that today. Or maybe that still exists in the elementary school - middle school market that I don't see as much any more?
I see that you are on the cusp of making a point though. Go ahead and make it, since it might be s a valid one. Do you think that these technologies will make consumers interested in 3D printing?
Even though 3D printing is all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show, many people outside the industry are still puzzled by all the fuss. "Explain 3D printers to me. Why are they useful?" one non-techie friend of mine tweeted me this week, after I posted a picture of a 3D printer at the show.
The show is called the *consumer* electronics show, not the *producer* electronics show. Most people are not makers, so they won't be excited about a technology that lets them make something. Even if people want something, a 3D printer requires that you know how to design that item.
When someone invents a 3D designer, where you can say "Build me a thing that..." then you might get the consumers excited.
The article at dailynewsen.com is so full of grammatical errors that it looks like a machine translation. It's really hard to understand. Slashdot editors need a shared list of "don't link to this site" domains, so that if they get a submission that is based on one, they can find a better source instead.
Yes, you are right. I misinterpreted "user" thinking that it meant "someone distributing software that links against the GPL." I didn't even consider the idea of writing software but never distributing it. The word "user" and "distributor" are not juxtaposed in my mind. I will correct my thinking accordingly.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but it should. That's the point. If the public paid for it, the public should have open access to it.
No, that isn't the point. The point is to have good peer-reviewed science that is available to anyone for a nominal fee. You seem to be confusing "open access" with "free as in beer."
There is no valid societal or ethical reason private publishers should have a stranglehold on publicly-funded research.
There is no strangle hold. That is a slashdot-ism. It costs journals money to review articles and publish them. Paying $15 for a scientific journal article isn't a strangle hold.
At first, this whole article sounds like nonsense. But I think I figured out the key mistake here:
...aims a laser at an aircraft
This is about drones!
Surely they don't mean commercial planes. It doesn't make sense that a normal hand-held laser pointer could track a 700mph airplane 30,000 feet away, when it has no ground facing windows. Police and medevac helicopters are the current issue. They fly low, at night, over populated areas. But I wonder if part of the goal here is to nip this in the bud before police drones become a regular site in the sky.
Chip and pin would be much safer if you entered the pin into the card, instead of into the merchant's equipment.
when the journal you published it in copyrighted and paywalled it, and the public has no ready access?
That is public access. Any member of the public can obtain it by simply buying the article, or a subscription. "Public access" doesn't always mean "must provide everyone a free copy."
Why do they not use the same std library implementation? LLVM is a compiler, it can compile the same std library code. If the LLVM designers wanted to improve it, it was GPL with the library extension so at first glance it seems like they could have used it.
I know of IBM as a:
- Desktop PC manufacturer
- Server manufacturer
- Chip manufacturer
If they don't have those 3 things any more, then what are they? To my knowledge, IBM has some of the best fabs in the world. It's amazing to me that this is not part of their core business. This is... wow... just wow.
I disagree. I believe QOS can be done neutrally.
...less important than access to (insert major corporation name here>'s customer portal website.
I don't think it is fair to call that QOS. QOS is for distinguishing between packets that are realtime and packets that are not. When things are busy, prioritize VOIP packets over the email.
Note: I'm not saying that ISPs will do so. But it technologically can be done.
I'm glad someone finally asked this, because I was confused on this the first few headlines on this topic.
What baffles me is why can't they just open up this computer and see how it works?
The problem, as usual, is badly written headlines and summaries. It's not a literal black box. It's not actually in disguise. The scientists know what is inside and what it does. That isn't the problem. The problem is that we aren't sure we understand how those parts actually function. We aren't sure if the quantum effect he designers were trying to take advantage of is actually happening. The real question is "Does this design actually entangle photons and use quantum mechanics, or can it be understood to work within the realm of classical physics?"
The ultimate test is to see if it can do the annealing calculations faster than a classical computer could.
The word emulator in the context of the English language is different from the meaning of the word emulator in the context of computers. With computers, an API is not an emulator. An emulator is necessarily a virtual machine.
Don't use the dictionary definition for a technical term. If you insist on doing so, I will take a drive to your home and ask you to plug in your mouse.
Be careful here. We must distinguish the difference between "extreme" and "principled."
Snowden's initial leak showed violations of the law and the constitution. If that was his only leak, lots more people would call him a whistleblower. But other leaks by Snowden show perfectly good, legal, constitutional countintelligence programs. It is perfectly valid to say he is a whistleblower for one leak but a traitor for the other. THAT ISN'T NUANCE.
Nuance is "a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound." If one leak was completely black, and another completely white, we should not mix them together and call the result gray and nuanced. If someone murders person A then saves person B, we don't compromise and call it manslaughter. We say they are guilty on one count, and not guilty on another. We need to look at Snowden this way.
Do we have a lack of nuance, or a lack of principles?
In the US, we have a constitution that lays down the basic theoretical philosophical principles of government. People who react loudly when the government violates those rules are principled. Principled means "acting in accordance with morality and showing recognition of right and wrong based on a given set of rules." Principled is not the same as extreme. Being principled is a good thing. If you are outraged by what the NSA did, do not let someone label you as "extreme" in order to bargain you away from your beliefs.
But we have people in this nation who want to be able to get away with this stuff, while still claiming to follow the rules. They want the issue to look "nuanced," so that there is wiggle room to violate the principles. Do not let the "nuanced" view turn into a slippery slope that the government uses to skirt the law and erode the constitution.
From the article:
Saying that there may be some middle ground or grey area is seen as a sign of weakness, of moving off the party line.
That is true. People need to be able to change their opinions, or not forced down an extreme side. That tendency is why we have these two ridiculous parties in America. People follow banners more strongly than they follow principles. But Snowden's leaks are not about party. It isn't flip-flopping to say leak A is one thing and leak B is another. These leaks are about our principles. This is not the time to back down. Back down on gray things like immigration, healthcare, spending, and tax codes. But for this one, follow the principles.
Seriously, nobody is actually proposing this, are they?
Yup. Read the article.
As snarky as that comment is, it rings true. The impact of the Nobel Peace Prize has been diluted by awarding it to someone as an attempt to motivate them, rather than based on what they actually did. Perhaps if Obama goes on to earn that prize after the fact then it might restore the prize's meaning to some degree.
FWIW, I too have had success with Monoprice items. I suspect that Monoprice components are often the same as the brand name components, with a different outer shell, much like store branded electronics.
Specifically, I had a LAN party and I ordered a brand name Gigabit switch and a Monoprice Gigabit switch. Both worked as designed. The Monoprice one had the benefit that the case was flat, so it was more stackable than some of the fancier case designs.
FTFY:
That, I think, is actually a major problem. Low-priced amateur 3D printers are high-maintenance things and half the time, things don't go right.
This really is a solved problem, just not in the low-cost market.
I have a Makerbot Replicator at home, which is unreliable. My employer has a Stratasys. It requires only yearly maintenance, and it never fails a print. When I described my Makerbot woes to the mechanical engineers here at work, they were all surprised. They just thought of the devices as being reliable like office printers. Things like prints not sticking, some shapes not being printable, things coming out the wrong size, or manually calibrating were all news to them. The Stratasys control panel doesn't even let you change slicing settings or temperature settings. It just works.
I learned that there is a reason for that 100k+ price tag.
In true Dell tradition, it will come with some additional features not present in the regular Makerbot Replicators:
* The custom Dell firmware will be the same as the regular Makerbot firmware, but will come with additional Dell branded support features that make your printer go 1/2 the speed. You can however, uninstall these tools.
* It will come with free red filament, a 30-day free trial blue filament, a "light" green filament.
The red filament will not be compatible with your new 3D printer. The blue filament will automatically bill your credit card after 30 days even if you have not used it. The "light" green filament is half the diameter of the "full" green filament and will cause your prints to break. You can optionally upgrade this to the "full" green filament for half price.
I would love to see the insides of this thing. The biggest problem I see is that the mixing process requires you to push all the plastic out of the extruder and prime it again with the new filaments. That would waste a lot of plastic at each color change. So if you printed something with multiple colors per layer, it would waste a lot lot of plastic.
Does anyone have any more details?
So a traditional 2D printer manufacturer shouldn't go to CES either then? I mean, people who would use such a thing would be producing, not consuming.
touché! Were there any 2D printers there? I didn't think that kind of thing would be show-offy enough.
And besides, a 2D printer requires that you know how to design that print out too.
Yes, but the 2D design is much easier. I find that anyone can learn how to design a useful 2D object, and has cause to do so. Hence the signs/banners example. 3D objects are a whole other dimension, pun intended. I suppose, if and when the day comes that 3D design software is as easy to use as 2D design software today, then that would change the outlook. I'm not sure that is possible though. Time will tell...
So what would the consumer use the 3D printer for? You gave 2 examples: copying objects with a 3D scanner, and downloading objects off the internet.
I'm not sure how useful the first is for the consumer. Presuming that a 3D scanner will only ever be able to copy static objects, nothing with moving parts. So they could copy parts, perhaps to fix things. EZ drywall repair maybe? Fix that broken picture frame, coat hanger, or curtain rod? Well... assuming it isn't so broken that the copy won't be broken too. Or that it is easy to fix the part digitally. I'm not so sure on that though. It might work for simple toys or game pieces.
The second case is downloading parts online seems more useful to me. You could print snap-together things that can move. So there you get your guns, toys, etc. Just pay a licensing fee per print. I could see manufacturers putting out the 3D design of something rather than making the part. But there are lots and lots of obstacles there, so it might not ever be worth doing. Time will tell.
It's funny because you point out that 2D printers are dying, which I notice too. Long ago: "Print Shop" was the killer app for a PC. Everyone wanted a computer + a dot matrix printer so they could maker banners and signs. I don't see people doing that today. Or maybe that still exists in the elementary school - middle school market that I don't see as much any more?
I most certainly have!
I see that you are on the cusp of making a point though. Go ahead and make it, since it might be s a valid one. Do you think that these technologies will make consumers interested in 3D printing?
From the latimes article:
Even though 3D printing is all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show, many people outside the industry are still puzzled by all the fuss. "Explain 3D printers to me. Why are they useful?" one non-techie friend of mine tweeted me this week, after I posted a picture of a 3D printer at the show.
The show is called the *consumer* electronics show, not the *producer* electronics show. Most people are not makers, so they won't be excited about a technology that lets them make something. Even if people want something, a 3D printer requires that you know how to design that item.
When someone invents a 3D designer, where you can say "Build me a thing that..." then you might get the consumers excited.
The article at dailynewsen.com is so full of grammatical errors that it looks like a machine translation. It's really hard to understand. Slashdot editors need a shared list of "don't link to this site" domains, so that if they get a submission that is based on one, they can find a better source instead.
Yes, you are right. I misinterpreted "user" thinking that it meant "someone distributing software that links against the GPL." I didn't even consider the idea of writing software but never distributing it. The word "user" and "distributor" are not juxtaposed in my mind. I will correct my thinking accordingly.
You are right. It is a shame that your Karma is so low you start at -1.
But it was removable.