Well played, good sir

Bee's die after stinging, which means that you're losing twenty hives of bees for only $350. That sounds like a huge loss to any bee keeper. That also seems like a hell of a lose of bees that are already suffering from sudden colony collapse... Am I wrong here?

I can't be the only one who thought that "Biophilia" is something you get when you don't use a trojan...

No small task on a planet that has 38% our gravity, an inhospitable atmosphere, and no large scale mining, manufacturing, or fabrication plant. It would take many years and many missions to make the colonies self sustaining. Currently, our closest attempt at living in a closed ecosystem (biosphere-2) resulted in 2 years, with O2 dropping and CO2 rising heavily towards the end of the experiment. Worse yet, the experiment spawned a movie staring Pauly Shore. It's not that I don't believe that we will have the technology eventually, but I can't help but feel that anyone who thinks that we can colonize Mars the way we colonized other continents has no understanding of the issues.

Really? This is based of anecdotal evidence. This statement means nothing. I can think of many ways that the government has regulated things that haven't caused death, but that's as good as saying that they haven't. Here's a more pressing question - at what point should a government step in to regulate something to prevent death. if it prevents the death of 10 people? 100 people? 1000 people? Is there greater benefit in not regulating as the number of people who are killed pales in comparison to the trouble that regulation would cause? Accidents will happen, people will die. Not everything is done without reason. A lot of it is playing the odds, and sometimes, people lose.

This is assuming that a house's wall is a singular item, which is a silly thing to think. Walls contain space for insulation, space for water to drain, wiring, plumbing and HVAC space. Yes, we could build a shelter with this machine, but 3d printing a house would be like 3d printing a maker bot. It may look similar, but until you have the insides built, it won't function. There's also a big issue with reinforcing the concrete. The walls will be primarily in compression which is fine, but if you tried to create multiple levels, the floors in tension would quickly crack under their own weight.

I'm not saying that we'll never 3d print a house, but their proposal shows a lack of understanding of the basic premise.

I often wonder if the real reason they don't post these documents is that they are simply not interesting. Lulzsec and Anonymous are both quick to say that they've hacked into servers, and as they've shown, they've been very good at exploiting holes. However, they seem to be finding holes into low level information, and the "scandal" they find is generally nothing more than mundane information. Do you recall Chinga La Migra? They released tons of personal emails against the Arizona police department, and the only thing that these emails showed is that they were a pretty normal operation, including the fact that this department, too, hires idiots who like to send chain mail through email. So in the end, they found a few gigs of unprotected email, bragged about it, and never bothered to realize that this wonderful treasure trove of information was essentially trash. At best, they created harassment for the officers who, as far as the documents show, weren't involved in anything illegal. The most damaging release of information so far has been usernames and passwords of a porn site, which only exposed the dangers of having the same log in and password information for multiple sites.

To be fair, NPR did post the breakdown of this cost and explanation in the article, near the top. It's also a quote from Steven Anderson, who is "a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq." I would argue that man knows what he's talking about, and more importantly, it's his words, not NPR's.

That's one purpose of a window. Thanks to modern building techniques, we have the option to create much larger openings in the facade, and thus you get your typical glass and steel skyscraper. Ever notice that they all have a reflective, metallic tint to them? This is to keep much of the light out, because in a large office building, your interior temperature suffers heavily from the amount of light let in. You also have an issue with glare, which tinting can help with as well. If your solar system reduces the amount of solar gain and the amount of light into the building while still allowing some light/vision/heat in, you can forgo the window tinting, and make the windows even more useful.

Surface area. Most (if not all) homes lack the sq.ft. of glazing required to make a transparent PV array viable.

Before damning this idea, let's look at the other side. STEM majors will make much more money during their career than a liberal arts major likely will. That way, spending a little more on an education is a better return on investment. This also allows students (hopefully) to see a direct return on their investment in the quality of their education. If you are expected to pay more for your major, hopefully, this will be reflected in the facilities and instructors offered. On the flip side, it could also bring in more people who were turned off by high prices for majors that will not result in high paying jobs. I'm currently working on funding for a masters in architecture, a job that pays less than, say, engineering, and costs just as much tuition wise. Allowing variable rates lets them maximize their profit while allowing students the opportunity to pursue whatever major they choose.

This is, however, highly dependent on the rates chosen and how the money is ultimately spent. As always, if your product costs more than it's worth, then you'll end up losing buyers.

Exactly! This is a common problem with anything from Inhabitat. They repost content without any details backing up claims such as "X is 10 times stronger than Y, this is a huge breakthrough!" Beyond this, the facts they post are often out of context, and occasionally flat out wrong (view most anything they post about space). I do admit that sometimes the articles they link to have the same levels of actual content, but why should we post a blog that's never anything more than a poor repost of another blog?

This pains me to say as I used to be a big fan of Inhabitat when they first started. I even won a contest of theirs years back. As it stands, though, their content has no purpose here on slashdot.