For me, the economist is a bastion of capitalism (the title should be a clue here) and despite high standards of writing, very biased in many areas. Since I left the UK more than twenty years ago, I have come to see that the BBC is usually a mouthpiece for the older, wealthier generations, and that their Asian bureaus are keen to overblow every small thing to justify their huge expat salaries. The Beeb is great for nature documentaries but its news is extremely biased.
I would settle for financially supporting smaller entrants such as Democracy Now and Link TV. Sure they have an agenda, but at least they are up front and honest about it.
So Nahmias aka Dizingof suddenly becomes famous from companies like Stratasys showcasing his designs as some of the best in the field, showing the capabilities of the top end machines, and so he turns round and in return for all this free publicity, decides to sue. What a wanker. If it were not for Stratasys, we would never have heard of the guy. Crawl back into your fucking hole you miserable little ingrate.
I do not get chance to get to go to the cinema very often except when I visit HK, but I have to say i really enjoyed the effects in Pacific Rim even if the story was written by a three year old.
Even so, I am bored of endless violence and pessimistic future scenarios. When can we have some movies that take a more optimistic approach to the future. Let's see some Bucky Fuller, Bill Mollison type scenarios.
The other thing, is please stop wasting money an celebrity salaries. The world is full of aspiring young actors with far more talent than Nic Cage or Russell Crowe. Save the money and spend it on interesting plots instead please.
"the electronic version is quickly pirated and easily available around the world each month."
Your magazine is not being pirated, it is being made available to those who, due to unfortunate geography or those for whom you do not provide payment options, could not previously have access. This is an opportunity for you to reach out and convert a much larger readership rather than villify them as criminals. This is very good free advertising for and should be embraced and leveraged.
It is good thing that you were too cowardly to post the details of your magazine, as you would have had many cancelled subscriptions due to your arrogant attitude, and your accusing filesharers of being pirates.
If you think that Silicon Valley looks like Logan's Run, then you should take a close look at Shenzhen. No end of the government follies look as though they could be the carousel (the stadiums especially have often been used for similar purposes) and most businesses have a very open policy about hiring youngsters only. Terry Gou would look especially good in a Sandman suit.
No countries have ever actually existed. They were all (and still are) figments of some over zealous bureaucrats imagination. National boundaries are usually completely arbitrary lines drawn on map, with little thought given to the people that are actually on the ground.
Nationality is nothing more than a coincidence of birth. Neither I nor anybody else chose to a citizen of the locale in which we were born.
At best, nationality is just another excuse for vested interests to restrict our travel movements and to curtail our freedoms. In many cases it is also a very profitable source of revenue. It is especially interesting that corporations can become multinational relatively easily, but individuals are subject to more and more restrictions in terms of security and visas every year.
At worst, the curse of nationality is the cause of more conflict than any other, including religion. And yet nationality cannot even be strictly defined. A Chinese for example, does not have to be born in China to be Chinese. And it is highly unlikely that a Caucasian born in China could ever be considered Chinese. Nationality is simply a myth, sometimes it is more to do with appearance and culture than anything else.
The sooner we dump these backward concepts the better for all of us.
I would highly recommend Leopold Kohr's "Breakdown of Nations" as some interesting background reading on this subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr
This just goes to show that contrary to public opinion the authoritarian regime of China has very little control over the people that it calls its citizens.
Whenever there is some kind of problem, they are unable to fix at grass roots level, usually because nearly all kinds of civil society is completely banned. The education system is so worthless that trying to instil civilized behavior in people from an early age, is in direct conflict with all the other propaganda messages. Rather than try to fix preventable problems before they occur, their only solution is to wade in, in a very heavy handed fashion and start killing people. This is the sign of a desperate, unstable regime.
In other places, incentives would be offered, education would be used and the media would be co-opted, but this is China so only death threats are the perceived solution. No wonder that everybody wants to leave.
I really like the idea of Tivo, but it does sound very US centric.
What would be a good alternative for use in Asia?
Are there DVRs available at reasonable that can match TIVO's abilities?
Is it possible to just cobble together a couple of cap cards or should I be looking for a specific manufactured device?
Social apps have seen their peak and the next cycle of growth will come from what we currently term 3D printing. Perhaps the most indepth review of this is Kevin Carson's 'The Homebrew Industrial Revolution.' Combined with the sustainability and maker movements, the changes in global fabrication will make the likes of Facebook and Apple seem about as historically pertinent as Betamax and pet rocks.
I can see this doing well for those that have a small aquaponics home set up. A few bugs every now and then would be a great treat for your tilapia or pike.
Insects generally form a very important part of the food chain, so why not culture them and then transfer that protein up into a more palatable form.
Here is a useful excerpt from permaculture guru Bill Mollison.
Bill Mollison: "Yes, well sometimes you walk on the land and you have the crop. People say, “I’ve just bought some land I want to develop a crop.” I’ll give you and example. I had a young bulldozer operator in Australia. He’d just bought some really run-down cattle land. He had a bulldozer and he put some dams in. Then he said, “Will you come onto my farm and tell me what I ought to do here?” He had nice dams there which he had stocked with trout. ”How are they going?,” I asked him. ”Fine,” he said. ”I got some eight pounders out of them.” ”When did you put them in?,” I inquired. ”Last year,” he replied. And the place was swarming with grasshoppers; it was overgrazed.
I said, “You’ve got your crop; your crop is grasshoppers!” On a 1.8 to 1 conversion ratio you can get a pound of trout for every pound and a bit of grasshoppers. You can trawl those grasshoppers just like you trawl fish. So, the other thing is, grasshoppers go for yellow, so if you float yellow balloons on the dams, you get a rain of grasshoppers into the water. So that’s what he did, and he had his crop. The land might already have its crop on it, and yet you might want to change that crop, and you will come out worse off.
For instance, we have a pasture grub that runs at 20 ton to the acre living in the first four inches of the soil. If you covert it into turkey, you’re talking 5 ton of turkey to the acre, just for a small soil-skimming operation daily. But they’re still trying to get rid of the pasture grub! And yet that land can barely sustain a sheep on four or five acres. So where’s the trade off between a 120 tons of protein and 40 pounds of protein as sheep? So, wherever we see that the crop is already there we’ve come out on top. And we have nothing to do."
I also heard him say that anacondas have the highest protein conversion rate in the world, if you are looking for a more exciting crop.
Also, just because it is a Chinese address, does not necessarily mean that it is a Chinese citizen.
Shanghai, Shenzhen and dozens of other Chinese cities are filled with entrepreneurial expats at the moment, who understand that the best business opportunities are now in places like the Pearl River Delta and not Paolo Alto. Many of these guys are very computer literate, and it only takes one disgruntled individual trying to get back at those responsible for flushing their home county's prospects down the toilet.
And what if the Chinese do not produce the particular plastic widget you require. Chinese factories are not well known for their imagination and creativity.
A 3D printer is simply an extension of your imagination. If that is limited, then so will be your level of success with one of these machines.
A couple of months ago I worked really hard to research, write and independently publish an ebook on 3D printing, aimed at ordinary computer users. I made it easy to read, tried to be as imaginative as I could about all the different uses, and endeavoured to fill the book with useful, practical information. I even kept the price down to an absolute minimum ($3.49), just a fraction of the cost of my nearest competitor. I would have liked to have made it free, under a creative commons licence, but, after all, a man has got to eat. Since its release, I have worked hard on promotion, sending out review copies to anybody that showed an interest, as well as making a fair few clumsy mistakes in trying to obtain some free publicity. After all, it was my first attempt at self publishing. Most of all, I wanted to share my experience and enthusiasm with 3D printers, and counter all the articles that describe this technology as a fad, or simply over-hyped.
Now Cody Wilson, on the other hand, only has to fart, and the media are all over it, giving him miles of column space, even though my dog probably has more creative flair than this gun obsessed redneck. Now, do not get me wrong, I am as anarchist as the next man (especially if that next man happens to be a noted MIT Professor;-)), but it it is really getting me down that I am spending so long trying to get my work noticed, while some idiot, who wants to jeopardise the entire 3D printing industry, seems to get more press attention than the leader of North Korea.
At the moment, I am working on an updated edition of the ebook. That may seem fast, but this technology is evolving much faster than most of us expected. My own makerbot experiments are going really well, but my enthusiasm is being hammered every time I read the latest news splash in the wiki weapon saga. What am I doing wrong? Am I banging my head against a brick wall? Am I destined to remain in obscurity while some upstart gun-nut steals the show?
When I was much younger the sci fi that really got me hooked on science was the stuff that was easily accessible, and cheap enough to afford with my allowance.
That meant that I had lots of second hand paperbacks from Harry Harrison's 'The Stainless Steel Rat' series. I was also a big fan of the comic 2000 AD, which just happened to be at a very suitable price point for me.
My point is that stuff you recommend must be cheap and easily available. These days, there is a lot of good science fiction available under a creative commons license, so how about sharing a few PDFs of Cory Doctorow or Bruce Sterling.
Just out of interest, do your students read digital books or dead tree versions?
One trend that I would like to see further improve, is science and technology books becoming available with supplemental material for teachers and students to use in classroom settings. At the moment, I am putting together this kind of material to go with the latest edition of my new book on 3D printing, and would be interested to learn about other science and tech authors that have done, or are doing the same thing.
I really like the idea of the 'Hidden' app, for when your Mac or iPhone is lost or stolen, Hidden will show you where it is and who has it.
Is there something similar for PC laptops, preferably open source?
Malaysia is an easy option but there are lots of nicer places in Asia, especially if you do not want to live in 24 hour air con. For me I like the Tibetan foothills, where we get more sunshine than California, and yet there are still plenty of unspoiled valleys just waiting to be explored.
For some interesting predictions on how iglasses might develop, check out some short stories by Bruce Sterling who is very prescient in this area.
In particular Deep Eddy from the Chattanooga series.
"Deep Eddy is a 22 year old spec user who belongs to a group called CAPCLUG (Computer-Assisted Perception Civil Liberties Users Group). It is a collection of like minded people that use specs to alter and enhance their visual perceptions. Think sunglasses that are able to show you the internet, allow you to process multimedia, including type as if a keyboard existed at the ends of you finger tips, and has the ability to color the world around you as you see fit (or as other spec programs see fit)."
http://www.soullessmachine.com/2008/04/deep-eddy-by-bruce-sterling.html
Sterling along with Doctorow and others, is one of a new generation of enlightened authors who see copyright as being the barbed wired fence in the field of human creativity, and so much of their work readily available in digital format. Alternatively, the dead tree version is still available at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Fashioned-Future-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576429
Perhaps our largest recyclable plastic resource is the North Pacific Gyre, or as it is rapidly becoming better known, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous 'plastic soup' mass of marine litter trapped in the swirling vortex of currents of the Pacific Ocean. Recent studies estimate an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic litter every single square kilometre of the world’s oceans. The number of plastic pieces in the Pacific Ocean has tripled in the last ten years to what the UN estimates at one hundred million tons worldwide, with current trajectories predicting this figure to double in the next ten years.
A ‘fishing for litter’ campaign involved fisherman from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK who returned all litter caught in their net to the shore, landing some five hundred tonnes from sixty boats in 2004. By diversifying modern fishermen’s skills to restore our ocean environment, it is hoped that schemes like this will help regenerate Britain’s once strong fishing community.
Makerbot support the 3D4D Challenge, a competition that awarded Washington Open Object Fabricators (WOOF) a prize of $100,000 to develop a recycling process that will enable waste plastic to be used as filament for 3D printing machines. The project is focussing on recycling high-density polyethylene, the plastic used in milk cartons, but the requests for finished products have been slightly different to what might have been expected. You could be forgiven for thinking that many Africans would want more mass-produced items such as buckets and plastic bowls. However the project coordinators doubt that a 3D-printed bucket—even one made from milk bottles—will ever be cheaper than one made in a factory. The surprising alternative to buckets is actually boats. Most small vessels in West Africa are made from hardwood trees, such as teak, that are becoming increasingly scarce. Making them from waste plastic instead is an environmental win/win: rare species are conserved and less rubbish thrown away. The team estimated that if they had printed a boat from commercial plastic filament it would have cost them $800. Instead, 250 clean, empty milk bottles set them back just $3.20.
In 2007, hunters shot an Alaskan bald eagle in the face and left her for dead, but she was then found by Jane Fink Cantwell, a bird conservationist. The bird’s entire upper beak had been shot off, the equivalent of losing a limb for birds that use their beaks for feeding and preening feathers, and clearly a death sentence for this majestic creature. Janie and her small volunteer staff at the Raptor Chapter kept the bird alive through liquid tube-feeding until mechanical engineer Nate Calvin was able create a prosthetic beak using a 3D printed nylon-based polymer. This magnificent bird of prey has since recovered to full health and has been named Beauty, and most deservedly so.
http://birdsofpreynorthwest.org/beauty-and-the-beak-project/
This work was much more of an effort to increase the quality of the bird's captive life, rather than facilitate a release back into the wild with a new beak, but that should not restrict future projects. Contrary to initial thoughts, the beak actually needs to be ‘weaker’ not ‘stronger’ since the limitation is the connection points and the purchase available at those attachments. A new design is in the planning stages which will have ‘give points’ designed to allow the beak to flex before damage can be done at the connection points.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y5BYcu1glK4/0.jpg
The success of this project has led to the consideration of how 3D printing can be applied to the rehabilitation of other animals afflicted with similar damage. With the financial rise of the Chinese has also come a growth in the black market trafficking of endangered species body parts. These most famously include shark fins and tiger penis, sometimes for consumption, sometimes for pseudo-scientific medicine. One of the most horrific trends is the growth in illegal poaching of rhinos for their highly prized horns. A single specimen can now command up to $500,000 from Chinese buyers. In the most recent cases, well-funded poachers with high powered rifles and night vision goggles have been flying night raids into nature reserves by private helicopter. Upon immobilising these magnificent creatures, they proceed to hack off the horns, either with machetes or chainsaws. Unsurprisingly, few of the rhinos survive, situations quite similar to enormous sharks killed simply for a single fin. Printing a replacement horn for a rhino is obviously many magnitudes more difficult that printing a beak for an eagle, but this is a project that is being pursued. Designing a replacement is feasible from a mechanical standpoint, but has some incredible challenges from a practical viewpoint (controlling the animal during and after the procedure, limiting/assessing a ‘typical’ use/load scenario after attachment).
Excerpted from
"3D Printing - The Next Techologoy Goldrush"
I admire the way that you are trying to find an ethical solution to your dilemma and hopefully I might be able to help. I have recently helped a number of European customers shop for audio visual products at the Chinese AV scrap markets, where the major labels dump all their surplus and tax write off stock. So far, I have been helping mainly French nationals who are interested in rescuing surplus that has been dumped my companies such as Fnac, Carrefour and Virgin but there is a great deal of German music and movies too with BMG being particularly well represented. If you would like more details please check out this link at the Boycott RIAA site http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/8915
or email me direct at 'wenshidi (do I really need to tell you what to write here) yahoo.co.uk' Here are a few more relevant links to give you some background on the situation on the hidden entertainment industry practice of disc dumping.
Further background reading about sawgash CDs
'Zombie Discs' by Neil Gough www.time.com/time/asia/news/column/0,9754,1 00067,0 0.html
or for those where Time is blocked by the great firewall http://www.sonicchina.org/r/r1-6.htm
The Sinic Savant: Saw-Gashed CDs www.chinanow.com/english/features/sinic/sawga shed. html
Wudaokou: Shopping Heaven for the Backpacker & Student Set www.chinanow.com/english/beijing/city/feature s/wud aokou.html
Slashdot Mirror
Which science fiction novels or short stories would make the best low budget crowdfunded movies? http://www.quora.com/Which-sci...
For me, the economist is a bastion of capitalism (the title should be a clue here) and despite high standards of writing, very biased in many areas. Since I left the UK more than twenty years ago, I have come to see that the BBC is usually a mouthpiece for the older, wealthier generations, and that their Asian bureaus are keen to overblow every small thing to justify their huge expat salaries. The Beeb is great for nature documentaries but its news is extremely biased. I would settle for financially supporting smaller entrants such as Democracy Now and Link TV. Sure they have an agenda, but at least they are up front and honest about it.
So Nahmias aka Dizingof suddenly becomes famous from companies like Stratasys showcasing his designs as some of the best in the field, showing the capabilities of the top end machines, and so he turns round and in return for all this free publicity, decides to sue. What a wanker. If it were not for Stratasys, we would never have heard of the guy. Crawl back into your fucking hole you miserable little ingrate.
I do not get chance to get to go to the cinema very often except when I visit HK, but I have to say i really enjoyed the effects in Pacific Rim even if the story was written by a three year old. Even so, I am bored of endless violence and pessimistic future scenarios. When can we have some movies that take a more optimistic approach to the future. Let's see some Bucky Fuller, Bill Mollison type scenarios. The other thing, is please stop wasting money an celebrity salaries. The world is full of aspiring young actors with far more talent than Nic Cage or Russell Crowe. Save the money and spend it on interesting plots instead please.
"the electronic version is quickly pirated and easily available around the world each month." Your magazine is not being pirated, it is being made available to those who, due to unfortunate geography or those for whom you do not provide payment options, could not previously have access. This is an opportunity for you to reach out and convert a much larger readership rather than villify them as criminals. This is very good free advertising for and should be embraced and leveraged. It is good thing that you were too cowardly to post the details of your magazine, as you would have had many cancelled subscriptions due to your arrogant attitude, and your accusing filesharers of being pirates.
If you think that Silicon Valley looks like Logan's Run, then you should take a close look at Shenzhen. No end of the government follies look as though they could be the carousel (the stadiums especially have often been used for similar purposes) and most businesses have a very open policy about hiring youngsters only. Terry Gou would look especially good in a Sandman suit.
No countries have ever actually existed. They were all (and still are) figments of some over zealous bureaucrats imagination. National boundaries are usually completely arbitrary lines drawn on map, with little thought given to the people that are actually on the ground. Nationality is nothing more than a coincidence of birth. Neither I nor anybody else chose to a citizen of the locale in which we were born. At best, nationality is just another excuse for vested interests to restrict our travel movements and to curtail our freedoms. In many cases it is also a very profitable source of revenue. It is especially interesting that corporations can become multinational relatively easily, but individuals are subject to more and more restrictions in terms of security and visas every year. At worst, the curse of nationality is the cause of more conflict than any other, including religion. And yet nationality cannot even be strictly defined. A Chinese for example, does not have to be born in China to be Chinese. And it is highly unlikely that a Caucasian born in China could ever be considered Chinese. Nationality is simply a myth, sometimes it is more to do with appearance and culture than anything else. The sooner we dump these backward concepts the better for all of us. I would highly recommend Leopold Kohr's "Breakdown of Nations" as some interesting background reading on this subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr
Shoot Jay Leno ...
Can I use a 3d printed gun for that ???
I have searched high and low on where to find a bank without ATM fees but without success. Am I missing something obvious?
This just goes to show that contrary to public opinion the authoritarian regime of China has very little control over the people that it calls its citizens. Whenever there is some kind of problem, they are unable to fix at grass roots level, usually because nearly all kinds of civil society is completely banned. The education system is so worthless that trying to instil civilized behavior in people from an early age, is in direct conflict with all the other propaganda messages. Rather than try to fix preventable problems before they occur, their only solution is to wade in, in a very heavy handed fashion and start killing people. This is the sign of a desperate, unstable regime. In other places, incentives would be offered, education would be used and the media would be co-opted, but this is China so only death threats are the perceived solution. No wonder that everybody wants to leave.
I really like the idea of Tivo, but it does sound very US centric. What would be a good alternative for use in Asia? Are there DVRs available at reasonable that can match TIVO's abilities? Is it possible to just cobble together a couple of cap cards or should I be looking for a specific manufactured device?
I looked at the author's bio, but it did not say anything about him spending any time in China. Does anybody know his in country experience?
Social apps have seen their peak and the next cycle of growth will come from what we currently term 3D printing. Perhaps the most indepth review of this is Kevin Carson's 'The Homebrew Industrial Revolution.' Combined with the sustainability and maker movements, the changes in global fabrication will make the likes of Facebook and Apple seem about as historically pertinent as Betamax and pet rocks.
I can see this doing well for those that have a small aquaponics home set up. A few bugs every now and then would be a great treat for your tilapia or pike. Insects generally form a very important part of the food chain, so why not culture them and then transfer that protein up into a more palatable form. Here is a useful excerpt from permaculture guru Bill Mollison. Bill Mollison: "Yes, well sometimes you walk on the land and you have the crop. People say, “I’ve just bought some land I want to develop a crop.” I’ll give you and example. I had a young bulldozer operator in Australia. He’d just bought some really run-down cattle land. He had a bulldozer and he put some dams in. Then he said, “Will you come onto my farm and tell me what I ought to do here?” He had nice dams there which he had stocked with trout. ”How are they going?,” I asked him. ”Fine,” he said. ”I got some eight pounders out of them.” ”When did you put them in?,” I inquired. ”Last year,” he replied. And the place was swarming with grasshoppers; it was overgrazed. I said, “You’ve got your crop; your crop is grasshoppers!” On a 1.8 to 1 conversion ratio you can get a pound of trout for every pound and a bit of grasshoppers. You can trawl those grasshoppers just like you trawl fish. So, the other thing is, grasshoppers go for yellow, so if you float yellow balloons on the dams, you get a rain of grasshoppers into the water. So that’s what he did, and he had his crop. The land might already have its crop on it, and yet you might want to change that crop, and you will come out worse off. For instance, we have a pasture grub that runs at 20 ton to the acre living in the first four inches of the soil. If you covert it into turkey, you’re talking 5 ton of turkey to the acre, just for a small soil-skimming operation daily. But they’re still trying to get rid of the pasture grub! And yet that land can barely sustain a sheep on four or five acres. So where’s the trade off between a 120 tons of protein and 40 pounds of protein as sheep? So, wherever we see that the crop is already there we’ve come out on top. And we have nothing to do." I also heard him say that anacondas have the highest protein conversion rate in the world, if you are looking for a more exciting crop.
Also, just because it is a Chinese address, does not necessarily mean that it is a Chinese citizen. Shanghai, Shenzhen and dozens of other Chinese cities are filled with entrepreneurial expats at the moment, who understand that the best business opportunities are now in places like the Pearl River Delta and not Paolo Alto. Many of these guys are very computer literate, and it only takes one disgruntled individual trying to get back at those responsible for flushing their home county's prospects down the toilet.
I wonder how long it will take for this to be extended to even more valuable 3D files such as .stl files
And what if the Chinese do not produce the particular plastic widget you require. Chinese factories are not well known for their imagination and creativity. A 3D printer is simply an extension of your imagination. If that is limited, then so will be your level of success with one of these machines.
A couple of months ago I worked really hard to research, write and independently publish an ebook on 3D printing, aimed at ordinary computer users. I made it easy to read, tried to be as imaginative as I could about all the different uses, and endeavoured to fill the book with useful, practical information. I even kept the price down to an absolute minimum ($3.49), just a fraction of the cost of my nearest competitor. I would have liked to have made it free, under a creative commons licence, but, after all, a man has got to eat. Since its release, I have worked hard on promotion, sending out review copies to anybody that showed an interest, as well as making a fair few clumsy mistakes in trying to obtain some free publicity. After all, it was my first attempt at self publishing. Most of all, I wanted to share my experience and enthusiasm with 3D printers, and counter all the articles that describe this technology as a fad, or simply over-hyped. Now Cody Wilson, on the other hand, only has to fart, and the media are all over it, giving him miles of column space, even though my dog probably has more creative flair than this gun obsessed redneck. Now, do not get me wrong, I am as anarchist as the next man (especially if that next man happens to be a noted MIT Professor ;-)), but it it is really getting me down that I am spending so long trying to get my work noticed, while some idiot, who wants to jeopardise the entire 3D printing industry, seems to get more press attention than the leader of North Korea.
At the moment, I am working on an updated edition of the ebook. That may seem fast, but this technology is evolving much faster than most of us expected. My own makerbot experiments are going really well, but my enthusiasm is being hammered every time I read the latest news splash in the wiki weapon saga. What am I doing wrong? Am I banging my head against a brick wall? Am I destined to remain in obscurity while some upstart gun-nut steals the show?
When I was much younger the sci fi that really got me hooked on science was the stuff that was easily accessible, and cheap enough to afford with my allowance. That meant that I had lots of second hand paperbacks from Harry Harrison's 'The Stainless Steel Rat' series. I was also a big fan of the comic 2000 AD, which just happened to be at a very suitable price point for me. My point is that stuff you recommend must be cheap and easily available. These days, there is a lot of good science fiction available under a creative commons license, so how about sharing a few PDFs of Cory Doctorow or Bruce Sterling. Just out of interest, do your students read digital books or dead tree versions? One trend that I would like to see further improve, is science and technology books becoming available with supplemental material for teachers and students to use in classroom settings. At the moment, I am putting together this kind of material to go with the latest edition of my new book on 3D printing, and would be interested to learn about other science and tech authors that have done, or are doing the same thing.
I really like the idea of the 'Hidden' app, for when your Mac or iPhone is lost or stolen, Hidden will show you where it is and who has it. Is there something similar for PC laptops, preferably open source?
Malaysia is an easy option but there are lots of nicer places in Asia, especially if you do not want to live in 24 hour air con. For me I like the Tibetan foothills, where we get more sunshine than California, and yet there are still plenty of unspoiled valleys just waiting to be explored.
For some interesting predictions on how iglasses might develop, check out some short stories by Bruce Sterling who is very prescient in this area. In particular Deep Eddy from the Chattanooga series. "Deep Eddy is a 22 year old spec user who belongs to a group called CAPCLUG (Computer-Assisted Perception Civil Liberties Users Group). It is a collection of like minded people that use specs to alter and enhance their visual perceptions. Think sunglasses that are able to show you the internet, allow you to process multimedia, including type as if a keyboard existed at the ends of you finger tips, and has the ability to color the world around you as you see fit (or as other spec programs see fit)." http://www.soullessmachine.com/2008/04/deep-eddy-by-bruce-sterling.html Sterling along with Doctorow and others, is one of a new generation of enlightened authors who see copyright as being the barbed wired fence in the field of human creativity, and so much of their work readily available in digital format. Alternatively, the dead tree version is still available at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old-Fashioned-Future-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576429
Perhaps our largest recyclable plastic resource is the North Pacific Gyre, or as it is rapidly becoming better known, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous 'plastic soup' mass of marine litter trapped in the swirling vortex of currents of the Pacific Ocean. Recent studies estimate an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic litter every single square kilometre of the world’s oceans. The number of plastic pieces in the Pacific Ocean has tripled in the last ten years to what the UN estimates at one hundred million tons worldwide, with current trajectories predicting this figure to double in the next ten years. A ‘fishing for litter’ campaign involved fisherman from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK who returned all litter caught in their net to the shore, landing some five hundred tonnes from sixty boats in 2004. By diversifying modern fishermen’s skills to restore our ocean environment, it is hoped that schemes like this will help regenerate Britain’s once strong fishing community. Makerbot support the 3D4D Challenge, a competition that awarded Washington Open Object Fabricators (WOOF) a prize of $100,000 to develop a recycling process that will enable waste plastic to be used as filament for 3D printing machines. The project is focussing on recycling high-density polyethylene, the plastic used in milk cartons, but the requests for finished products have been slightly different to what might have been expected. You could be forgiven for thinking that many Africans would want more mass-produced items such as buckets and plastic bowls. However the project coordinators doubt that a 3D-printed bucket—even one made from milk bottles—will ever be cheaper than one made in a factory. The surprising alternative to buckets is actually boats. Most small vessels in West Africa are made from hardwood trees, such as teak, that are becoming increasingly scarce. Making them from waste plastic instead is an environmental win/win: rare species are conserved and less rubbish thrown away. The team estimated that if they had printed a boat from commercial plastic filament it would have cost them $800. Instead, 250 clean, empty milk bottles set them back just $3.20.
In 2007, hunters shot an Alaskan bald eagle in the face and left her for dead, but she was then found by Jane Fink Cantwell, a bird conservationist. The bird’s entire upper beak had been shot off, the equivalent of losing a limb for birds that use their beaks for feeding and preening feathers, and clearly a death sentence for this majestic creature. Janie and her small volunteer staff at the Raptor Chapter kept the bird alive through liquid tube-feeding until mechanical engineer Nate Calvin was able create a prosthetic beak using a 3D printed nylon-based polymer. This magnificent bird of prey has since recovered to full health and has been named Beauty, and most deservedly so. http://birdsofpreynorthwest.org/beauty-and-the-beak-project/ This work was much more of an effort to increase the quality of the bird's captive life, rather than facilitate a release back into the wild with a new beak, but that should not restrict future projects. Contrary to initial thoughts, the beak actually needs to be ‘weaker’ not ‘stronger’ since the limitation is the connection points and the purchase available at those attachments. A new design is in the planning stages which will have ‘give points’ designed to allow the beak to flex before damage can be done at the connection points. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y5BYcu1glK4/0.jpg The success of this project has led to the consideration of how 3D printing can be applied to the rehabilitation of other animals afflicted with similar damage. With the financial rise of the Chinese has also come a growth in the black market trafficking of endangered species body parts. These most famously include shark fins and tiger penis, sometimes for consumption, sometimes for pseudo-scientific medicine. One of the most horrific trends is the growth in illegal poaching of rhinos for their highly prized horns. A single specimen can now command up to $500,000 from Chinese buyers. In the most recent cases, well-funded poachers with high powered rifles and night vision goggles have been flying night raids into nature reserves by private helicopter. Upon immobilising these magnificent creatures, they proceed to hack off the horns, either with machetes or chainsaws. Unsurprisingly, few of the rhinos survive, situations quite similar to enormous sharks killed simply for a single fin. Printing a replacement horn for a rhino is obviously many magnitudes more difficult that printing a beak for an eagle, but this is a project that is being pursued. Designing a replacement is feasible from a mechanical standpoint, but has some incredible challenges from a practical viewpoint (controlling the animal during and after the procedure, limiting/assessing a ‘typical’ use/load scenario after attachment). Excerpted from "3D Printing - The Next Techologoy Goldrush"
I admire the way that you are trying to find an ethical solution to your dilemma and hopefully I might be able to help.
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I have recently helped a number of European customers shop for audio visual products at the Chinese AV scrap markets, where the major labels dump all their surplus and tax write off stock. So far, I have been helping mainly French nationals who are interested in rescuing surplus that has been dumped my companies such as Fnac, Carrefour and Virgin but there is a great deal of German music and movies too with BMG being particularly well represented. If you would like more details please check out this link at the Boycott RIAA site http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/8915
or email me direct at 'wenshidi (do I really need to tell you what to write here) yahoo.co.uk'
Here are a few more relevant links to give you some background on the situation on the hidden entertainment industry practice of disc dumping.
Further background reading about sawgash CDs
'Zombie Discs' by Neil Gough
www.time.com/time/asia/news/column/0,9754,
or for those where Time is blocked by the great firewall
http://www.sonicchina.org/r/r1-6.htm
The Sinic Savant: Saw-Gashed CDs
www.chinanow.com/english/features/sinic/sawg
Wudaokou: Shopping Heaven for the Backpacker & Student Set
www.chinanow.com/english/beijing/city/featur