Yeah, the salary taboo is a bit strange. Supposedly it's not a taboo in Germany, possibly wider Europe (anyone?).

Then again, salary is way more based on bluster and attitude here. It's secret because the guy next to you who does a crappier job is getting paid more because he's a better talker... and the decision makers tend to be in the better talker category and like it that way.

I'm dealing with the fallout of a full time employee (the ONLY full time for software) who quit when he found out what contractors like me were making. Of course, I think I earn it. :) I always wanted to talk to that guy before all this and tell him he needed to demand more... but that's a pretty good way to get yourself run off and create a big reputation gap in your work history. So, I secretly argued a couple times for him to get a raise... but although I convinced (I think) his immediate boss nothing was done. I probably shouldn't have done anything... but the immediate boss was very approachable on stuff like that.

Well, at least if executive compensation was private it would slow down the pissing contest arms race that is executive compensation right now. If they can't compare salary, then maybe the wouldn't feel like their 'package' is too small so often.

There are a lot of things that need fixing... that doesn't mean you can't do Y and/or Z until problem X is fixed.

That's "Why is NASA spending money putting people in SPAAAACE when there are hungry people here on Earth?" kind of logic. That, or "Ignore the man behind the curtain" conspiracy theory.

Society is pretty big... we can do more than one thing at a time.

Maybe if we took steps forward with the massive income inequality it would build momentum towards fixing other problems. You could see how one might lead into the other...

I really don't think we should have too much income EQUALITY either... but the INequality is really getting out of hand right now.

Uhh... 100% tax rate at 64K income?

Even raising the minimum wage to $20/hr would be 100% tax at $175K. That's pretty insane.

I actually agree in concept, but I think the very top rate should not exceed 90% and that would be around 50 million. Say 60% at 1 million. 70% at 10 million, 80% at 25 million.

All adjusting for inflation using the same criteria as social security.

So you're saying that paying someone a higher minimum wage makes them poorer... hmmm....

Oh, man. I was thinking Galaga, Space Harrier (yes, for some reason I really enjoyed it), Gauntlet... I keep forgetting about Zaxxon. It was rare, but always my first choice if I saw it.

Actually, there is a membership level where you can get spaces that big. Also, I believe Mark does a lot of mentoring, teaches classes, etc. There's also an upstairs section in that area you haven't seen yet with more people space. Try not to prejudge based on what you think you see in a panning video shot, eh? I've been there a couple times on the open house nights. It's a pretty neat place.

Mine, also abandoned. I quickly stopped using the Kindle once it was obvious it was useless for viewing datasheets. http://www.griffin.net/2010/01/hacking-the-amazon-kindle-dx-part-2-qt-and-sudoku.html

Many small manufacturers or innovators have a product based on a single "ah ha!" moment that took no effort in that moment to think of. They usually took a (potentially deep) background in the field and some luck in having the right thoughts in the right order or being exposed to the right stimulus that day. However, they THEN took tremendous risks in quitting the day job, getting a business loan, building out an office space, setting up tooling, hiring employees, and starting production. The real risk is in that leap of faith that you'll be able to capitalize on your idea and make something out of it. That's what people want some minimal level of protection for. In that sense, your theoretical piezo innovation as a product might qualify.

However, if you just took your idea and ran to the patent office for something to sell to a patent troll... no. There's value there, sure... but it needs to be value that is actively exploited in the economy. If you're just creating land mines to extract money from the marketplace, you're not helping anyone. The goal should be to protect people's investments in creating new things that everyone benefits from.

Very simiar to the patent troll case... I could see how if you're a serial inventor and just sit around coming up with great ideas you should be able to make money selling those ideas to people who will actually bring them to market. It's a tough distinction to make.

The core idea should be competition that is fair. If I spend a year to develop an improvement that takes a competitor one day to copy... that's not fair. If I spent three seconds coming up with a great idea that I know isn't going to be obvious to anyone, so I then spent a huge amount of money and effort to produce the product.... and a factory retools a line overnight to produce the same thing.... that's not fair. However, if someone working in isolation does in three days what some less talented/experienced people did in six months... that's fair. It's nearly impossible to NOT notice the results of your competitor's labors, too. Where do you draw these lines? How arbitrary can this crap get?

I think terms are too long. The current system is pretty crappy. It certainly seems weighted towards the big players. It's a hard problem, though. I don't know what the answers are.

Well, those are called royalties... and that's an extremely common way to handle things.

In fact, it's a potential outcome in this specific case. Many royalty agreements started as lawsuits. It's probably not likely here, though... since the per unit profit for the little guys is so drastically different than the bigger guy's margins. 3D Systems will just want this stopped.

It'd sure be nice if there was a uniform way to know what patents apply to your product idea and a fixed formula for what royalties should be. Then, people could know exactly what things would cost them and put that in the plan from day one.

I think STL predates FDM, actually.

I'm being a bit lazy by not looking this up, but what about FDM using support material? I'd bet that was somewhat later than FDM itself. I'd bet there are a lot of cumulative improvements in FDM that are still covered by patents.

So, everyone's free to make basic FDM machines as they were described by the earliest patents. There's a lot of ground Stratasys covered since then that is probably being copied and leaving even FDM producers exposed to potential legal problems.

I'm pretty conflicted on the whole thing. Give the hackers a basic tech like FDM, and they'd make most of the same improvements themselves... but they're going to be hitting ground covered and patented by commercial entities along the way. Many many times, however, someone's going to have looked at a commercial printer for inspiration... and that's essentially an unfair shortcut.

I think people should be free to produce what they can FOR THEMSELVES without worrying about patent infringements... which would cover most hardware hackers (sort of a fair use concept). However, once you get funding and try to commercialize something, you're subject to normal commercial rules.

You're essentially asking why bother with patents at all. The hobbyists have been copying patented innovations of these commercial 3D companies. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Before, it would have been swatting at mosquitos. Now, a rabbit's popped up with $3 million, and they're going to shoot it.

The hobbyists have created a lot of innovation, too. The basic hobbyist MO is copy and improve. That's fine when you're copying other open source/hardware stuff... but when you copy someone's proprietary crap, you're in a grey area.

Hobbyists will obviously argue against patents, because they don't benefit from them much at all. Commercial companies need to do something to prevent large scale ripping off of their work, or they can't survive. (Case in point: the recent MakerBot Industries change of heart... which depresses and dissapoints me but as a small manufacturer myself I understand why they might think they have to do that)

This absolutely affects these commercial companies' bottom line, and they have every legal right to protect the investments they've made in R & D. I have a commercial 3D printer myself and I just went out of maintenance partially because a brand new Replicator 2 is possibly better and costs the same as one year's maintenance. This is an absolutely clear textbook case of what patents are supposed to be for.

This is essentially a collusion of worlds. "Cool, I could make that" vs. someone's got to make a living. Believe me, it sucks when you know you could make something but you're just not allowed to. I have a good deal of sympathy for both sides. I've released open source software (including -very- minor contributions to the Linux kernel), I'm becoming active at my local hackerspace, AND I sell proprietary industrial products that I could not make a living doing if they were free to copy.

Let's just ignore the whole discrimination problem here and ask simply:

Doesn't this remove a lot of the incentive for the lower threshold students to catch up? Wouldn't it demoralize the students with the higher threshold?

This is simply rigging the statistics to hide the problem. It will create many more problems than the one it attempts to cover up.

My small city at 8:15am had no line. The only way my voting could have gone faster is if the lady had the signature book open on the correct page already (5 seconds to switch), and if the lady at the door hadn't asked me my last name (another 5 seconds) to decide which empty line I should stand in.

I have "The Black Hole", and watched as a kid too. To qualify as a blatant rip-off, I'd think the movies would have to be at least somewhat similar.

While technically the common items you mention are present in both... they are extremely different in presentation. There MAY be points where running away from stormtroopers in the death star could be similar to running away from Max in that huge ship... I don't really see much in common here.

Could "The Black Hole" be an attempt to capitalize on the interest in space Star Wars, etc created? Sure, it's possible. That doesn't make it a rip off. They're not remotely similar in feel at all.

The Black Hole gave me nightmares as a little kid (Max's spinning blades killing that guy). I've always seen it as really dark almost-horror film. It's a crazy mad scientist makes killer robots and turns people into freakish automatons. That's a little different than a rough group of rebels fighting a galactic empire.

Heck, Phantasm feels more like "The Black Hole" to me than Star Wars does. That may be the scarred little kid in me talking, though. ;)

Yeah, but it's a toll road between AUSTIN and SAN ANTONIO.

Obviously it's another republican plot to reduce democratic turnout.

and no, I'm not serious. (sad that I actually have to say this)