The Department of Veterans Affairs has had EMRs for close to 50 years. AFAIK, there have been no major incidents with this. So, not only can the government do something well,they can also do with with a reasonable level of security.

With my Printrbot, I have three steps to start printing. First I design what I want using something like OpenSCAD or download the design from somewhere online. Then I have to run it through software like Cura to turn it into something that the printer can actually use. After that I can send it to the printer for printing. Remember that the printer is really just a slightly beefed-up Arduino - it's a pretty simple device. If you were to integrate the anti-gun code into Cura the same way that anti-counterfeiting is in copiers you might have something.

Don't put words in my mouth. I handled the cover design for my books, though the publisher did offer to do it and did convert it into a format that was better suited for a book cover. I wrote technical books, so the publisher also paid for technical assessments to make sure I wasn't wrong along with the editing. Those are very valuable services.

But hosting a few dead trees in a warehouse is worth 50% of a book? Amazon is the 300lb gorilla in book sales, so they'll charge what they think they can get away with. If another vendor comes along and gets the name recognition that Amazon has and only takes 20%, then Amazon may change their ways.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that authors have lots of options to get their work out. But the choice is they either get about 5% and have a huge infrastructure behind them to help get their work out, promoted, and looking nice, or doing most of it themselves and getting 70% and hope they have an underground hit that lots of people buy.

In traditional book publishing, the author gets about 5% of the list. The publisher sells the book to a retailer for 50% of the list price and the author typically get about 10% of what the publisher sells it for. At least that's what it was in my case. So getting 70% on a self-published book isn't a bad deal. Though editors are still important.

What are those? I know about chromebooks and I know about Android tablets.

All the trademarks. Middle of the day, thick Indian accent, said he was from Microsoft support, said there was a problem.

He really was. He was calling me about a ticket I had opened with Azure support. Go figure.

At the time I was in a support role for the client. That buzz could be my wife calling (which I could ignore), could be server a up and died and needed my attention.

My android (now) does that as well, but I can still leave the phone in my pocket.

I don't like my phone making noises and I generally wore headphones. Which left me with leaving the phone in my pocket and either putting it on vibrate and have phantom buzzes or put it on completely silent and miss texts/appointments. Got a pebble maybe 9 months ago and it's been great. As long as I'm in bluetooth range I'll get notified for SMS/Google Chat message, some Facebook updates, calendar events, and incoming phone calls. All of that is customizable and while a few apps allow you to send canned responses I don't use that currently - I just want to know something happened.

Best part is when you're in a meeting and your phone buzzes, you can just check your wrist to see what it was which is far more discrete than pulling out your phone, unlocking it, and then finding the right app.

Space War

Wish I had mod points.

It's pretty bad out there for organization and storage. I tried using just flat directories by date as others mentioned but then it became difficult to find things when you didn't know when the event happened. Then I went with Gallery, but it got comment spammed. Then I went with Gallery 2, but that POS is a total disaster, enough that the entire project seems to be shut down.

I'm using smugmug now. Easy to upload and download, they have a fairly open API for writing your own interface, and you can easily change protection on items you upload so they're public, private, or public if you know the URL. Costs a bit of money but integrates with my EyeFi cards nicely so I don't have to worry about uploading photos at the end of the day.

It should - when I took my RHCE training/test the instructor went around the room trying to gauge people's expertise with Linux. When he came to me and I was done rattling off what I had been doing he looked at me and said "how about we switch places?". We got along great during that week.

The local makerspace had a deal where you'd be there for the day building a Printrbot Metal from the kit with a few people from their staff assisting since the directions that come with it are garbage. When I left I had a fully working and calibrated printer. Since I assembled it myself I know what to look for when there's problems. Hook up a RPi to control it and hook up a webcam and I can send prints from anywhere and watch it run. For Halloween I made a bunch of translucent skulls that I put blinking LEDs in. Made for a great effect.

But from a raw amount, the price of gas dropped since fewer people were driving to work, and fewer goods were being shipped, so I'd have to guess that the total number of miles driven during that time dropped as well. The per-mile amount of pollutants that went out may have been higher, but the total amount that went out may have been far less than a few years before.