Just some random thoughts....
I did not know
Ouroboros, but I am saddened for the loss of one who has written much for the benefit of this community. I have added him to my node audit queue, for the most appropriate memorial I can think to give a man is to read and appreciate what writing he has chosen to share.
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On a completely different subject, I have been thinking a lot lately about how
3D printing is going to change everything, and perhaps in surprising ways. Will people still go to stores to buy
silverware or
dishware or
nuts and
bolts and
screws and
nails when they are able to jet these out of a
printer in their home? The most interesting thing I've heard lately is about a lawsuit to prevent the dissemination of software encoding a 3D printing formulation to print a fairly rudimentary
plastic handgun, which requires only two metal parts-- a regular hardware store nail for the
firing pin, and an extra chunk of metal stuck in it to set of
metal detectors, solely so the gun doesn't run afoul of provisions barring undetectable plastic guns from being brought aboard airplanes. The lawsuit is grounded in brick-and-mortar thinking. Once a piece of code escapes into the wild, it cannot be cabined by anything as quaint as a court's order.
But, perhaps more interestingly, this 3D gun needs no gun maker. Ironically, this morphing of First Amendment and Second Amendment issues could be exactly the sort of thing to put the big gun makers, the Colts and the Winchesters and the Smith & Wessons, out of business -- after all, you can't compete with "free." As one who is both a libertarian and a pacifist, I find this to be an appropriate trajectory. Even as entrenched as "gun culture" is in the United States, I suspect that technology forcing to the fore an economic model which makes it unprofitable to manufacture or sell a product will equally sap efforts by those industry members to invest in encouraging the culture of embracing that product. And who knows how much of our gun culture is instilled by marketers overcoming people's innate array of interests.
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BookReader is done!! Node auditing otherwise proceeds at the usual pace:
banjax has successfully taken up
The Standard Offer (for which I have jumped him to the head of my node audit queue), and is
on page 2 of 6, whereas
passport is
on page 15 of 27
Pseudo_Intellectual is
on page 7 of 31
Segnbora-t is
on page 7 of 34
And
pukesick is
on page 7 of 29.
In the queueueu:
avalyn is
on page 1 of 5, and
Ouroboros is
on page 1 of 6.
Blessings, all!!