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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: For What Are You Using 3-D Printing?

An anonymous reader writes: I've been thinking about getting a 3-D printer for a while: the quality is rising, the software is better, STL files really do seem a sufficiently good standard ("sufficiently standard," that is — I'm not worried that printers are going to stop supporting it anytime soon), and prices have dropped quite a bit. Importantly to me, it also seems like less of a jumping-off-a-cliff decision, since I can get a completely assembled one from places as wild and crazy as ... the Home Depot (not that I plan to). However, even practical things I can think of to print can't truly justify, and that's OK — I hope not to require enough replacement knobs and chess pieces to necessarily *need* one, and playing around with it is the main likely upshot, which I'm OK with. But still, I'd like to hear what uses you have been putting your 3-D printer to, including printers that aren't yours but belong to a hackerspace, public library, eccentric neighbor, etc. What actually practical / useful tasks have you been using 3-D printing for, and with what printer technology? It's OK if you just keep printing out those chess pieces and teapots, but I'm curious about less obvious reasons to have one around. (And I might just use the local Tech Shop's anyhow, but the question still applies.)

Comment Re:Welcome! (Score 1) 1083

That is only for tax purposes, more or less.

It is about rather more, and rather more important rights than that.

Marriage is about people being together, not about the government allowing it or not.

And that is only related to religion if you decide you want it to be.

Comment Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score 2, Funny) 1083

It seems unlikely that there are any gay nerds. Nerds are a fraction of the general population. Gay people are an even smaller fraction of the general population. This would make the existence gay nerds seem highly unlikely.

Similarly, the odds that in the vastness of space, an asteroid could just happen to strike our moon seems so incredibly remote that one could safely conclude that there are no craters on the moon.

Comment 5 GHz bands are much quieter (Score 2) 152

Almost everybody's on 2.4 GHz, and the bands overlap with each other as well as with your microwave oven. If you can run your Wifi on 5 GHz, and don't have distance problems, it's really what you want.

Unfortunately, while my Linksys WiFi router can use both frequencies, it can only use one at a time, and I've got a few 2.4GHz-only devices in the house, so I'm stuck with 2.4. Occasionally it gets tempting to switch it to 5 GHz and drag out its dumber predecessor to run 2.4 on. (I bought the newer one because I needed 802.11n to compete with all my neighbors' 802.11n drowning out my wimpy 802.11g system. I was also surprised to find that it didn't support IPv6 sigh.)

Comment Fire dishonest CEOs. (Score 1) 328

It's amazing to me how much Slashdot readers hate discussing business management. Discussing business management is often painful, but I think we should accept the pain and get the job done. For example:

Marissa Meyer is not competent, in my opinion. A dishonest or sneaky CEO should be fired. This is the 2nd recent nasty manipulation Meyer has arranged. This is the first:

Has Firefox been Embraced and Extended with the intention of Extinguishing it by Microsoft? Mozilla Foundation now gets most of its money from Microsoft. Microsoft pays Yahoo. Yahoo pays Mozilla Foundation to make "Yahoo search" (actually Microsoft Bing search) the default search engine in Firefox. Most people don't have the technical knowledge to know how they've been manipulated, or how to restore the default search engine to Google search. Marissa Meyer's sneakiness is damaging Firefox's reputation.

The Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Composer GUIs have been damaged, apparently deliberately. Every time you do a file save, the newer versions of both ask for a new file name, and don't suggest the last file name chosen. The damage was reported several months ago, but has not been fixed. Is that another example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? People who feel forced away from Thunderbird may choose Microsoft software to replace it. Is that what Microsoft is trying to accomplish?

Change in subject: It's amazing how fast computer programming languages die. Pascal died in 2 years. Java is almost dead because the U.S. government issued a very negative warning.
Businesses

New Zealand ISPs Back Down On Anti-Geoblocking Support 50

angry tapir writes: A number of New Zealand Internet service providers will no longer offer their customers support for circumventing regional restrictions on accessing online video content. Major New Zealand media companies SKY, TVNZ, Lightbox and MediaWorks filed a lawsuit in April, arguing that skirting geoblocks violates the distribution rights of its media clients for the New Zealand market. The parties have reached an out-of-court settlement.

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