Because "do some emergency welding work" and "weld here" is not newsworthy.

I am more curious about what the reply was to the undegrad student and how did they keep him quiet. Also, did he get a congressional medal for saving 1000s of lives?

...and end with a no-fly list

Hello police? I would like to report a murder followed by cannibalism. Victim was known as Nokia...

Free trade works well on a level playing field. Factories that process their waste cannot compete with those that dump waste in rivers and smog rest into the air. Workers in free countries cannot compete with slave labour in the overpopulated third world, where 50% of engineers sit unemployed, while the "lucky" ones commit suicides on a regular basis.

Total cost of item = variable cost + _allocated_ fixed cost.

You cannot allocate entire price of printer to the cost of one soap dish. It's a very tricky business. Estimate how many gizmos the printer will produce during its lifetime, then try to __allocate__ a correct share of printer price to your soap dish. There are horror stories of businesses failing because they allocated fixed costs incorrectly. Don't let it happen to you, save the 3d soap dish!

In accounting, all costs are divided into two major categories: fixed and variable. Fixed is the investment in machinery, worker salaries, maintenance. Variable cost scales with quantity produced. Variable cost is what is used for quick decisions like this: buy a soap dish or print it at home, because all the fixed costs already occured.

If you want to factor in fixed costs like printer cost and maintenance, please kindly include cost of factory in china, salaries of factory workers, cost of trans-atlantic ship and crew, tractor trailer, etc. We cannot make the choice to buy vs print before we purchase a 3d printer anyways, it does not make sense, like division by zero.

Despite my conclusions I do not expect 3d printing to be viable at this point because the technology is too new: overpriced spools of plastic, shortage of freely available 3D soap dish templates, etc.

So they copied look and feel. Are there any patent-worthy inventions involved?

Patents are supposed to protect inventions, not megacorps that happen to be butthurt.

Well, when I was a 5-6 years old child, we used to have -20 C (-4 F) every frigging winter morning, and +24 C in the summer. As of late it became -5C in winter and +35 C in summer. I don't need nobody's propaganda to tell the difference, and I am not alone. You can ask ski resourt owners about receding snow line, or use the new shipping lane Canada to Russia via the North pole. How about you educate yourself first?

Let's break down the variable costs of your soap dish example (assuming the soap dish factory in China already built and 3d printer purchased)

3D printer costs:
- 20 minutes of time my to find the design, boot printer and spit the item out.
- Monetary cost: feeding in raw plastic and electricity should be negligibly cheap.

Mass-produced costs:
- Spitting it out of factory is negligibly cheap.
- Soap dish is loaded onto a giant container ship going from China, still cheap
- Somali ransom, let's assume it's still profitable
- Loaded onto trucks and shuttled around the country.
- Sit on the shelves of a dollar store for half a year.
After that 60% of still unsold soap dishes go to landfill. This is where the real costs of mass production kick in. Shelf space aint cheap. Landfill is still free, but it should not be.
- 20 minutes of my time to go to the store that has those in stock, of the kind that I like.
- $5 paid for the super-efficient mass-produced, tankered from China, trucked from New Jersey, collected dust on a shelf for half a year. Where is your efficiency now?

WinXP had to be forcibly retired eons ago because seniors tend to solve problems by clicking on everything, and that how he installed too many toolbars and rootkits. Switch to ubuntu+gnome2 was fairly painless.

Most of the stuff that was made in US is now made in China. What still is made in US does not carry the quality stamp anymore. I will take "made in Germany" over "made in US" without hesitation, all the while Germans enjoy over one month of vacation. All that is left of US superiority is either projecting our military power or Imaginary Property laws across the world.

Mass media propaganda machine is also one of the best, but sady we cannot export that.

So you suggest we honk to indicate that we don't tolerate behaviour? Like a teaching tool? I am afraid that is the problem they have in India -- everyone is a teacher, no students left.

There is a very safe one, it's called brakes. (unless you are tailgating).
When someone is shifting into your lane you can either honk or dodge. Unfortunately shifting into my lane happens so often here I just gave up and accepted it as part of life. Moreover, if you drive in Manhattan -- there are no lanes. Traffic weaves in and out around obstacles, like a snake.

Video on Demand stopped working on Linux some time last year. It is possible that the main culprit is Adobe, who stopped updating Flash on Linux. So my only option for Flash is now Google Chrome browser, that has its own interpreter. Unfortunately, Amazon vide is broken there as well. And the worst part? I cannot teminate my Prime until next year.

It is pure optimisation, actually. If you dangerously cut me off I can a) give way at the cost of 0.5 seconds of my time or b) slam that accelerator, which will result in either you reconsidering your driving habits or clipping a mirror and a body panel it is attached to. Given that you aready indicated a lack of mental capacity, there is a fat chance of spending the next hour waiting for police in your company.

... to stay on topic, I can also honk and be flipped a bird in exchange -- a mutual understanding, which will flow into a pleasant conversation and invitation for a dinner while we pick up lost bumpers and sidings off the highway.

Although I can imagine that driving in NYC is not a bad as India, the traffic gets pretty busy here. My driving algorithm is as follows:
1. Aways yeld to idiots and jackasses.
2. Maneuver to avoid accidents, honking does not help much.

Very seldom, if someone fell asleep at the traffick light, I give it a very short blip.

If all horns were uninstalled tomorrow we would not loose much. Now let's discuss sirens and light pollution.