Actually, it IS about economies of scale, even thought the scale is smaller. The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.

The same for the end user. To use the patio chair example, if it costs me 3 times as much to print out a replacement chair as the single unit cost at the store, I'll still opt for printing if the store will only sell me in lots of 6. Right now, it will cost 100 times as much, but that's going to drop - a LOT.

We're seeing a lot of this "minimum quantity" stuff in retail, so there will be a demand for cheap 3d printing, and there will be businesses that, because they are doing it all day, will have their own economies for handling 100s of one-offs in a routine fashion. It will be no different than ordering a sub with your choice of toppings.

Now think of automotive manufacturers who no longer have to stock (literally) tons of dead inventory. Once the stock runs out, they can fulfill their legal obligation keep spares for many parts just by being able to print on demand right at the dealership. They save on warehousing, capital, insurance ... it'll be a no-brainer for plenty of cheap plastic parts.

Hey, look at the bright side ... the people complaining about all that cheap Chinese plastic stuff will be able to make it right at home.

It's already being used for items like old tail-lights, that cost too much from suppliers because of scarcity.

As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down.

When a body shop has the choice between ordering a whole assembly for $250, or printing up just the cracked lens that the dealer won't sell them separately for $50, they'll print to order.

Replacement parts, where the OEM won't sell just the tiny plastic gear (you need to buy the whole fuser unit) are a good example. Switch housing got cracked? Sorry, we don't sell just that ... No, we only sell that in mininum quantities of 4. New knob? Sorry, you have to buy the whole timer.

This will allow for a lot of "unbundling", and could result in a revival of do-it-yourself repairs. And less waste.

Denier: "It was fake. They used (wait for it) MIRRORS!"

... or magnets, cuz they're, like,. MAGIC!

Both deniers and haters have two characteristics in common

• 1. They are so far mentally invested in their world view that any evidence to the contrary must be denied at all cost.
• 2. The more time that passes, the shriller and wider-reaching their attacks. If you keep on refusing to be a true believer, eventually it must be because YOU are part of the conspiracy.

If a lot of them sound more than a bit paranoid, it's probably because they ARE paranoid.

And the loonies will next say that the Russians were in on the whole thing. The two countries, by engaging in a fake "space race", were able to funnel bazillions of rubles and dollars into their military-industrial complexes, which provided a great way to skim off money^W^W^Wmodernize their economies. And if you ask for proof, they'll say that Obama and Putin are cooperating over the whole Ukraine thing, again for money. And that "isn't it a strange coincidence that since we haven't gone to war over the Ukraine, ebola has suddenly gotten out of control?"

In Soviet Russia, Conspiracy Theorists Moon YOU!

People tend to die when they retire.

Their universe also tends to shrink, providing less stimulation.

Me, I want to be doing interesting stuff forever, because even forever is too short when there's something new to discover every day, just by taking a walk and observing the world at your feet. There's so much beauty out there free for the taking, and we won't take half an hour a day to re-discover it.

Calling me a transsexual isn't libel. Saying I'm "Obviously a mentally troubled sick individual (being a transsexual makes that obvious)" is not just libel - here it's classified as hate speech.

Even the AMA now admits that transsexualism is a medical condition, not a mental disorder. And this brings me back to the topic of my journal entry - that we're going to see many more people who resort to anti-social behavior as a maladjustment to technological (or any other) change that leaves them behind (a fancy way of saying haters gotta hate because they can't accept change).

This is not about a hosts file. This is about how people resist change, and the damage it causes to them and those they interact with. Look at how foolish all those who predicted the end of civilization with the legalization of same-sex marriage look today. The same can be said of those who labeled all LGBT as mentally ill, and curable, several decades ago. Or go back a bit further, to inter-racial marriage. Or women getting the vote. Or women wearing slacks in public. Or blacks and whites attending the same schools and using the same washrooms and water fountains.

Change occurs. I don't know anyone whose computer isn't a quad core with oddles of ram. The old ways have to go, and that includes stupid arguments over an obsolete hosts file. Nobody cares about using more ram and cpu. I put adblock on this one yesterday for a test, and you know something? It's just as fast as ever. If something takes a quarter second instead of a sixth of a second, I'm not generally going to notice or care. Neither will anyone else. And that's why certain truisms, certain "accepted truths" become false with time - they lose relevancy because the context has changed.

People who try to buck the reality "because their tests show otherwise" are ignoring the greater reality - NOBODY CARES. It's entirely irrelevant to what the user wants to do.

What I *do* care about is how truly amazing it is that someone can continue to think they're advancing their cause by the tactics you're using. It's because, in my analysis, you HAVE to - it's the only way you can avoid seeing that something you treasured is irrelevant. The theory that "haters gotta hate, because the alternative is too painful", holds up well - it explains your actions. Until a better theory comes around, it has some utility.

And that's something I care about, because it gives me insight into other peoples' actions. Which means I certainly don't take any of it personally, because I understand the WHY behind it. Now if someone wants to propose a theory that better fits the observations, I'm listening. Theories are only useful until they're not :-)

The "Affordable Care Act" doesn't go at all far enough. It is to be lauded as a first step, but only a first step - in the sense that at least SOMETHING was done. The health insurance industry is no longer quite the untouchable sacred cow it was.

People keep complaining that government doesn't do enough, or that it's more efficient in private hands. And yet if you ask residents of countries with single payer plans if they'd switch to a US-style plan, they cringe. WE had to put photo ID on our universal health cards because too many Americans were borrowing them (in many cases "renting them" - there were organized bus trips and everything) from Canadians to seek treatment.

It still goes on to a certain extent. Americans with friends in Canada will say they've moved up here and provide their friends' address.

Personally, I think it's funny that nobody shows up to defend you when you post your crap. And not just on slashdot either ...

And no, you posting pretending to be yet another Anonymous Coward doesn't count.

Please allow me to introduce you to a new concept - "society" - where good people come to each others' defense to fight the anti-social jerks.

Look, nobody hates you. We just see you wasting your life defending the indefensible, the obsolete, and the absurd. Now, on occasion I'm sure everyone's done that, either through misunderstanding, error, or just plain stubbornness, but you have spent I don't know how many years not just repeating the same rants over and over, but also adding to them.

You can try googling "Doing the same thing and expecting different results".

Or, as Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working for you?"

Damned by your own words. How many times a DAY do you post "Barb - you're obviously a mentally troubled sick individual (being a transsexual makes that obvious)". Thanks for confessing that you've libeled me what, over 100 times, in the last few weeks. Hypocrite much?

Also, you're out of touch with current medical thinking. The classification of "Gender Identity Disorder" was removed from the DSM, gender dysphoria is now considered a medical condition, not a mental disorder. Gender dysphoria applies only to the discontent experienced by some persons resulting from gender identity issues, not the gender identity issues themselves.

The current medical approach to treatment for persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria is to support the individual in physically modifying the body to better match the psychological gender identity This approach is based on the concept that their experience is based in a medical problem correctable by various forms of medical intervention.

Even the media have figured it out:

So typical of you to be so far behind the times, whether it's the need for your hosts file or the fact that being transsexual is not, in itself, considered a mental disorder.

Another lie. I have NEVER made a penny off of any ads on any site. Ever.

The only banners I ran on ANY sites (not all of them) were freebies on some sites to promote OpenOffce and stuff like that, back before it became LibreOffice, or Firefox, to encourage people to switch, back when it wasn't all that popular. Again, not a penny.

And self-hosted banners that are directly in-lined such as those can't be hidden by a hosts file, so why would I have anything to fear?

I worked at several places that did websites for money or provided other internet services - my own stuff was always to "scratch an itch." But keep lying. It's what you do, because you keep proving that haters gotta hate. Or as Mr. Spock would say, "fascinating" :-)

Thanks. We've had a section of the population who, beyond a certain point, can't adapt to change. When change was slower and people didn't live as long, this didn't cause too many problems, since the overall amount of change they'd encounter in a lifetime was small.

Today? They're lost. They can't even use a flip phone without getting into trouble (I kid you not). They've lived at the same address for 3 decades and don't know much of the surrounding neighborhood. Mp3? USB key? Computer? Inaccessible.

It's a bit frustrating helping people like that, because they've built up too much "technical debt" in their lives - something that others have avoided. We all do it in one way or another. When I made the decision to master Java, that meant NOT putting effort elsewhere to stay current on some other aspect of technology. And that's okay, because nobody can be an expert in everything (and who'd want to be? Imagine the demands on your time???).

You're right - a lot of the hate vis. Microsoft and Apple is fear-driven. In the back of their minds they're thinking. "What if they really have the best solution for xyz? That means that all that time I put into abc is wasted." - which is of course a great example of cognitive distortion (or distorted thinking) leading to a false conclusion, and a damaging reaction. The false conclusion is that the time put into abc is a waste. The damaging reaction is to erect barriers to avoid even the possibility that they may be wrong.

APK has been trolling since I don't know how long. He does it because he has to. It's part of his identity, and abandoning it would leave a void. I can sympathize with his predicament - when I abandoned my former gender I didn't know what the outcome would be. All I knew was that I had no choice. Were my friends going to stand by me or hate me? What about my family? What about work? And the biggie - how would my two daughters react? All these were scary unknowns, and I couldn't fall back on all the habits and traits that I had built up over they years. Talk about starting your life over from scratch ...

But I had no choice. Other people, whether it's the Microsoft or Apple haters, or APK, haven't gotten to the point where they have no choice but to face reality. Many never will. And that's okay, because they don't know what awaits them if they drop their hating habits - change isn't always for the good, so why will they bother taking the risk. It's their lives, and their decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes that inability to accept that the world has changed leaves them like the Titanic - a good example for others of what not to do.

This is why he keeps trying to drag me into a false comparison between hosts files and utilities like adblock plus, and missing the meta-problems:

• 1. Nobody really cares. We will do damn well what we want with our computers, and no amount of crying wolf (and there's been a LOT of that) is going to make that change;
• 2. Spamming discussions with off-topic attacks is a good way to discredit yourself further. Throwing in a bunch of transphobic comments just makes it worse;
• 3. Why haters gotta hate is much more interesting than the fact that haters gotta hate, or even the topic of their hate. It reveals a lot about the changing human condition, something that applies to all of us, whether in or out of the tech world. It's also more constructive.

I love my android phone. My sister loves her iPhone. They can inter-operate, so competition is good. Without it, we'd still be stuck with bag phones at 50 cents a minute.

This service has to be really cheap and fast to succeed. Iridium and GlobalStar already offer a satellite-based service. Iridium really does cover the entire planetary surface; GlobalStar has most of the planet, but not the polar areas. So it's all about being price-competitive.