Isn't that a bit like the 3D printable 3D printer idea?

I was going to bring up the subject of open source 3D printers again-... then I realized that the equivalent to those is the 2D plotter. Easy to make, and you've got full control over the software. If you run Linux, you can inspect most of the source code (all of it, if you don't count IC designs or electronics as source code) from 3D model to gcode to printed sheet/object.

The difference is that in 2D printing, you don't really lose much by using a commercial printer. In 3D printing, if such a DRM stack were really implemented in all commercial printers.... yeah, RepRaps might last quite a while among all that competition.

Nah, this is a new space station created by Intel!

Maybe prevent people from creating advertisements that literally talk into your skull as you're trying to nap?

There are alternatives where the TOR traffic is clearly not related to the user who set up the exit node. One thing to come to mind is some Amazon cloud program thing that acted as an exit node. I think it was that, anyway, I didn't pay much attention to it.

You're an ancient roman time traveller?

Actually.. I don't pay them to do it, I don't even live in the USA, but they still do it. Hell, they do it -more- to foreigners. If I had any choice in the matter, I'd opt out of paying for any such things here in the Netherlands too. Of course, that's not a thing that'll ever happen... governments and police forces / intelligence agencies are just too tightly intertwined.

Back in may 2012, more people used RepRap style printers than Makerbot-produced ones (even though Makerbots should, by all means, counts as RepRap-style, but let's not get into that). I'm not sure if the tables would've turned so much in one year. Perhaps they have. And yeah, I'm aware that RepRap might not count as part of the industry due to its DIY nature. But still, the article implies that most desktop 3D printers that people acquire/use are Makerbots and that just irks me.

I'd appreciate if you people had a gaze at http://surveys.peerproduction.net/2012/05/manufacturing-in-motion/3/, one page in a set of results from a survey back in may 2012. It may provide some useful insights.

To be honest, I think Makerbot may already have already acquired a chronic case of "money-grubbing" more than 3 months ago.

As a Dutchman (*le hinting cough*), I don't really consider Makerbot to be desktop 3D printing anyway. I'm much more partial to the original RepRap project, housing a great variety of different styles of printer with their own mechanics. I built my own for about 550 euros, perhaps 700 dollars or so. I know one person has managed to build a Reprap for $300, and it should be fairly doable to build them for $400 or similar. With welding tools, bulk deals on the electronics, a supply of broken scanners and printers, and an existing 3D printer, you could probably churn out improvised machines for near $250 or less. Not counting labour costs, since I'm assuming this would be a charity or diy type thing.

So no. I don't think only about myself, and I don't consider myself to be particularly American. But you may be right about Stratasys trying to sell a high-end printing service, I don't know enough to really make an educated guess about -that- particular possibility.

Since a lot of people have home 3D printers and there's sites where you can request for something to be printed on one nearby for a certain price, I think any company trying to sell "3D printing services" using FDM machines would have a hard time making much profit.

You are so right. "Ruminations" can be interesting, but for video presentations I vastly prefer TED talks. They have it nailed down 9 out of 10 times. This video presentation is boring beyond belief, which is a shame because the topic in and of itself is interesting.

Then what this guy is saying is directly opposed to what Tesla is saying on combustion engines. Also he doesn't seem to have a good grasp of what a cab company does. I don't know about the US, but taxi's here are used to transport the elderly to hospitals and doctors for check-ups and whatnot, and also to allow for mobility of elderly. This includes longer trips on the municipality's dime. As such "only one station" to fuel up taxi's is absolute poppycock.

Cut a long story short, I don't think Peter Wayner sounds like he can predict shit from shinola.

Seems fairly simple to me. Find the average mineral ratio of this ash, pour together readily-available types of material to get the same mineral ratio, see if that works. If it does, yay. If it doesn't, grind it up. If that doesn't work, find out of there's small structures in the ash that are important. If the latter, we could still use the recipe for special projects by using real volcanic ash.

The romans did it on a pretty big scale, as far as I understand. So industrializing it with current technology would probably be fairly easy. There's no real reason it should be pricey after it catches on, if it does so at all.

Even if so, it could be worth building things without rebar, imitating this recipe, if you want something that'll stand for thousands of years instead of 50. Sure, it may not have the same structural strengths to begin with, but it'll keep its strength much longer.

Good for art and such, or any building meant to be impressive or to be used for a long time.