Two Rivers Fisheries is already doing this - they fish for Asian Carp, and sell it overseas.
Actually my granddaughter loves legos, and includes things she builds out of legos in her plays. But legos can be clunky and time consuming to put together (especially if you are trying to follow a complicated layout).
I think she would prefer to build it virtually first, and hit a key and have what she built come out.
You are right however - I have no idea about the general public. I do think that if a kid is already into minecraft (and it is pretty popular among my granddaughter's friends), they would be a good candidate for 3d printing from that kind of approach.
I think this is a key question for any 3d printer / software setup. Most of the posts on Slashdot seem to center around "designing something for real" (prototyping, replacing a part, etc.)
But I think a recreational version would take off if done right. For example, my 7 year old granddaughter loves minecraft, and spends hours building things there. I think she would love the ability to print out stuff she has built there. She also likes to make her own videos. She will arrange her dollhouses and stuff animals and make up a story involving them, and record it. I think she would love the ability to design her own dollhouses, sets, etc.
For her, a minecraft approach of dropping and destroying pre-made blocks, etc., would work very well. Especially if she can paint and color her model of whatever after it is printed. She won't care about the exact dimensions, etc., as long as it fits together. Let the software handle that.
So the problem becomes, I think, "know the audience" and design appropriately for that audience.
... I am sick and tired of the overreaction to these random events whether it be aircraft crashing into a building, a workplace shooting, a bomb detonation at a public event, etc...
Yeah, me too. To tell the honest truth, when I heard about the shooting at the LA airport my thought was "Oh, this is California, where they shoot at each other on the highway. Sounds like one of those people made it into the airport". While that was probably unjust (sorry, California), the point remains. We have plenty of nuts in America that will do stupid things. Let's not overreact and swat a fly with a Buick, so to speak.
... I do not feel safe with roaming machine-gun-toting police officers or military in any venue
Me either, but that's a little extreme. I'm perfectly fine with armed police officers doing crowd control at events, etc. I guess it's a matter of degree of arming for me. When police officers, etc. start carrying RPGs or the like, that's when I start staying home
Lethal injection is not humane
I don't think it's silly at all that the EU does this
On the "humane" aspect, I have been under anesthesia for surgery. I can testify I knew nothing, I felt nothing. If it's a question of administrating it properly, hire a anesthesiologist for the job, instead of ol' Tom down in the prison pharmacy.
To clarify my "silliness" comment, I am not mocking the EU for wanting to not have the death penalty. I have mixed feelings about the death penalty in general - some days I'm for it, some days I'm against it.
I was just commenting on the EU expecting it to matter by passing a magic law that will have no result whatsoever. I just find "make me feel good but do nothing practical" laws in general to be silly.
No. Europe's position is a longstanding one. And as the EU is a larger market than the US, an EU law forbidding a drug company to help with capital punishment carries weight.
In theory, I suppose. To me, this is just more legislative silliness. How are they really going to affect anything? There are still guns/ropes/gas chambers/rabid weasels/etc. The only thing this silliness can do it prevent using a more humane method over possibly a less humane one.
For me, it depends on the context of what I'm doing.
If I am doing something very complex, with many pieces that I have to keep in my head at once, I am much more productive if I stay with it and work late, even through the night.
But if I am doing mundane bs stuff, one hour is too long before I start becoming unproductive.
I have found multiple days of late hours will fry me if I do too many back to back. I need a night off somewhere in there or I wind up sitting in my chair just staring and doing nothing.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra