A cloner might not care about violating patents, but that's not the only factor, because the patents are enforced on import and within the markets. That is, if a cloner violates US patents, they can't sell product in the US, and the same in the EU, Japan, etc. So MBI, like the vast majority of companies doing engineering, files patents in the major markets (US, EU) so that if someone else blatantly copies their products they have legal leverage to stop them from selling into those markets.

This defense works in the real world. A few months ago, one of the cloners copied Makerbot's newer designs (the case design and control layout), and because MBI kept those proprietary, violating MBI's designs locked the cloner out of the US and EU. As a result, the cloner was forced to make their printer look different, and not identical to MBI's products.

The result is that, as I said before, companies that are cloning Makerbot's printers are using the open designs, or doing original work, because they don't want to get shut out of the US and EU. Copying open designs and making them cheaply is easy, they're good at it, and it's entirely legal so it's low risk. Copying proprietary designs is more work, and has more risk. Occasionally they try, but enforcement in the US and EU is effective in preventing cloners from blatantly copying proprietary designs.

Read the patent. It's not a patent on auto-leveling, it's a patent on using nozzle deflection to detect when the nozzle collides with something such as hitting a part of the print or for bed leveling. Bed leveling is properly disclosed as prior art. MBI's novel invention is using nozzle deflection (which their new extruder does) to detect collisions.

Really, you have to read patents more carefully. When a patent documents something as prior art, that's the opposite of claiming that it's your invention. Unfortunately the way patents are written is pretty confusing, but MBI's not claiming to have invented bed leveling, they claim to be first to use detecting nozzle deflection in 3D printing.

Yes, MBI started on an open platform (RepRap), then created proprietary aspects that they think give them a competitive advantage.

Most of them are minor, such as adding a bi-stable lever to the spring-tensioned extruder. But they didn't attempt to patent the community designs.

Most of the people freaking out are badly misreading the patents. That's not too surprising, since patents are pretty hard to read. But the parts where people are claiming MBI is patenting community designs are actually where MBI is documenting the prior art, which is exactly the opposite - they're documenting other people's designs because that's precisely what they're supposed to do, and they're not claiming those designs for MBI.

Don't propagate a misreading of the patents.

And MBI didn't "take" community ideas - everything that was open is still open, and MBI has contributed to open projects, and even started some open projects (e.g. Conveyor, Miracle Grue). And they strongly support open, shared designs, where they host hundreds of thousands of designs on Thingiverse for free.

MBI has been saying for years that they're making tools that are used by Makers, much like (for example) Epilog laser cutters. They don't feel that you can grow a large hardware company on purely open designs, because a competitor can come in that does no R&D and charge only for raw hardware costs and undercut on price, making the industry a "race to the bottom". So they keep open what they feel they can, and they keep closed the parts that they think protect them from "clones". You may disagree with their assessment, but they're being consistent.

As evidence that MBI might be right, there are several Chinese companies that took their open Replicator designs and crank out cheap copies, basically relying on MBI's design and software investments and selling at pure hardware cost. They're limited (legally) to using MBI's older designs, while MBI is attempting to innovate, and patent the innovations, to stay ahead of the cheap clones. And (amusingly) at least one of those cloner companies has now made enhancements to MBI's designs, and kept those enhancements proprietary, probably because they want a competitive advantage against smaller cloner^2 companies.

So you might prefer that MBI had stayed 100% open, and that's a reasonable discussion. There are certainly (smaller) companies that are purely open, and you'd perhaps be happier being their customer because you support that decision.

But when you make false accusations against MBI, instead of sticking to the facts, then it undermines your whole case.

There's not too much mechanical advantage in combining scanning and printing into once device, and they're too complex/expensive to combine because the combination would be too expensive and force users into bad compromises. This is different from 2D scanners and printers, because they're commoditized, so (1) the combination is cheap, and (2) you don't really care about the differences between specific scanners (or printers) because they pretty much do the same thing. In the 3D world, the different scanners (and printers) are very different, and they're expensive, so you're likely to research and select them independently based on your specific needs. Some day, when they're much more mature/commoditized, bundling them might make sense. But for now, it's too soon.

Laws apply even if you do things in your own home. And there are restructions on guns, as there have been for pretty much the entire history of the US. For example, it's illegal to make guns that are illegal for the general population to have (e.g. it's typically illegal to make a home machine gun). And it's illegal for you to make a firearm in your home (or sell one, or possess one) that can't be detected by a metal detector. Plastic or ceramic guns are illegal, and it doesn't matter how you make them.

"Comcast outright refused to accept more Netflix traffic from a 3rd party..."

As I explained, like many ISPs, Comcast caps or cuts off Cogent, because Cogent was violating their peering agreement. Search a bit, and you'll that pretty much every consumer ISP has cut off Cogent at one time or another. That's because Cognent hates paying for transit, and instead tries to use free peering transit..Peering only applies if there is balanced traffic in both directions, such as between two ISPs, whose customers send each other email, etc. If traffic is unbalanced, such as Netflix delivering tons of video to consumers and contributing no delivery capacity in return, then the transit has to be paid for. That's why all web sites pay for traffic, and don't get it for free.

So, as I wrote, either to fix the problem caused by Cogent, either Congent can either start paying for transit, or Netflix can use a more professional bandwidth provider. Instead, Netflix is trying to get the bandwidth for free from Comcast, with Comcast providing dedicated direct ports to Netflix, and Comcast is insisting that, like every other content provider, Netflix come in via standard bandwidth provider ports.

Exactly - home automation is in the complex/expensive/professional specialty market. Apple has the potential to take it to the easy/cheap/consumer market. Kinda like what they have done dozens of times over the decades - with laser printers, image editing, fonts, iMovie, iDVD and SuperDrives (a Mac with a SuperDrive cost 1/5th the cost of an industrial DVD burner at the time), iPOD, multitouch, mobile apps, etc., where they get it right as a complete end-to-end system that's consumer friendly and get traction where earlier players didn't. So it may not do everything the Crestron stuff does (their stuff is awesomely powerful) but it would presumably be nice and easy, not require a professional to do the install/configuration, etc., thus creating a consumer level home automation market that's (in unit volume) orders of magnitude larger than the current market.

But who knows, perhaps people will enter the home automation market, outgrow Apple's version, and become new high-end customers for you?

Exactly. Apple didn't want DRM. They added it because it was required by the music labels. Apple always supported non-DRM media as well, and they switched to non-DRM music as soon as they could get the music labels to agree to it. So Apple didn't "embrace, extend and extinguish" AAC, they embraced it and drove it to wide market adoption. In contrast to MS and Real, for example, who pushed proprietary formats as their primary formats.

Comcast's infrastructure is quite good, and has minimal congestion. I've seen the charts.

The problem is that Netflix uses an ultra-low cost bandwidth provider, Cogent, and Cogent keeps its prices low by making free peering agreements with ISPs and then violating them, it's constantly getting either cut off or throttled by ISPs. The problem is easy to fix - either Netflix has to use a better bandwidth provider than Cogent (and they're all better than Cogent), or Congent has to either honor its agreements or pay for transit.

The real dispute is between Netflix, Cogent and Comcast. What's really going on is that Comcast uses a very low quality bandwidth provider, Cogent. Cogent has the very bad habit of setting up peering arrangements with ISPs, then violating the terms of the agreements (which require Cogent to receive as much transit as it sends into the ISPs network, so they're helping each other out equally). Then the ISP either caps or shuts Cogent off for violating the peering agreement, and Cogent tries to use its customers to pressure the ISP into continuing to give Cogent bandwidth for free despite their breaking the peering agreement.

If Comcast wants reliable bandwidth into ISPs, they can pay a better bandwidth provider, like every other content company does. Those providers have good relationships with the ISPs, and can reliably deliver video streams. And if Cogent wants to reliably deliver bandwidth, they can pay for transit the way everyone else does.

But as long as Netflix uses only a bottom-feeder like Cogent, and Cogent continues to violate peering agreements with ISPs, Netflix' service is going to suck for some customers. It's completely in their power to fix it, but instead of doing so they're trying to pressure ISPs into eating the costs of Netflix' business.

I have 100 Mbps Comcast bandwidth, and no cable TV or telephone. They don't try to force me to buy their other services, though they do send me a flier in the mail every so often. And the bandwidth is just fine - I've noticed no troubles with Hulu or Netflix.

Actually, if internet service were a regulated monopoly it could be much more efficient than it is now. Compare to water and power, which as regulated monopolies were required by law to continuously invest in infrastructure to provide service with good reliability and safety margins, in return for which they made a guaranteed profit. Then it was deregulated in many areas, but since the companies were still effectively monopolies, there was minimal competitive pressure so the companies slashed their investment in infrastructure, while jacking up rates, in order to maximize short-term profits. The result is worse service with higher prices because there's neither competition nor oversight. And high return for company officers and short-term investors.

For natural monopolies, competition doesn't force efficiency, so you have to have regulatory oversight. If you have neither competition nor oversight, you get screwed.

Exactly. This is a dispute between "carriers", where Comcast wants to stop buying transit from its bandwidth providers, and instead get transit for free from Comcast. Comcast wants Netflix to either buy transit from bandwidth providers or pay Comcast for the transit; By analogy to the postal service, imagine that you wanted to send a letter to someone in the US, but not pay either Canada Post or the USPS for it.

Exactly. This is critical, as rejected ballots (scan failures and overvotes) are 6-7% of votes case. If the ballot is rejected in the precinct for voters to fix, that eliminates almost all vote failures. In contrast, precincts that use centrally tabulated ballots end up throwing out 6-7% of votes cast. A common method of manipulating elections is to use precinct scanners in precincts that vote "the right way" and to use centralized scanners in precincts that vote "the wrong way", basically reducing turnout of the "wrong people" by 6-7%, which can be enough to throw an election to the "right people".

Wow, your complaint is amazingly wrong.

The system he's describing is Precinct Count Optical Scan, and it's arguably the best way to run elections in the US. Voters vote on paper ballots. The ballots are scanned in the precinct. Overvotes and scan failures are rejected, with the ballot returned for the voter to replace, which eliminates the largest cause of errors in voting. Successfully cast ballots drop from the scanner into a sealed container, so all counted ballots are securely stored for recounts and audits. Every step of the process is observed and signed off by multiple poll workers, with seals, etc.. And the USB sticks, ballots, etc., have a chain of custody. And, of course, a random sample of ballot boxes should be audited to confirm that they match the digital records.

If you 'hacked' the digital record, you go back to the sealed paper ballots and re-scan them, and achieve nothing. If you 'hacked' the paper ballots, you committed election fraud (a felony) and left physical evidence. Only if you 'hacked' both paper and digital records, and produced the identical result, would you pass an audit.

If you're relying on audits not being performed, then you can 'hack' the digital records. But with a paper ballot, you can always go back to the paper ballot as the true vote, and undo the hacking. This is distinctly different from DRE (direct recording electronic) voting systems, which have no paper ballot, and thus cannot perform a meaningful recount or audit.

Given all of that, I'd have to say that paper ballots make elections much more secure, because they're a physical record of the voter's intent, verified by the voter, and which is auditable and recountable, while digital records are invisible and easily changed, making audits or recounts meaningless.