The general process that includes lost-wax casting is called investment casting, and while it can be done with ABS, it requires the mold to be baked off in a kiln capable of much higher temperatures than with wax. Burning ABS at home probably isn't a good idea either. I'm not sure about how other materials would work.

You can use your incinerator to run absorption cycle chillers, then. :)

...and the old saw about racing comes to mind:

How do you make a small fortune in rural broadband?

Start with a large fortune.

The MAI court held that 17 USC 117(a) wasn't applicable because the end-users were licensees--regardless of Peak's actions as a repair technician. Also see Vernor v. Autodesk for more on the difference between owner and licensee rights.

IANAL, but I think the AGPL is pretty solid. The Ninth Circuit held in MAI v. Peak that copying software into RAM for execution is indeed copying, and the provisions of 17 USC 117(a) don't apply to mere licensees (as opposed to copyright owners). Being that the AGPL license, which allows you to use, copy, and modify the software, only remains valid if you continue to comply with its terms, you are infringing copyright by continuing to copy the software into RAM for purposes of executing it if you're not abiding by the license. You have no right to copy the software otherwise.

Then again, without a girl in the picture, you don't much need birth control...

Or, even worse, the practically impossible combination of FreeBSD, IIS, Sybase and Tcl. Ouch!

I'm skeptical of low IDs--back in the day, you were distrustful of identifying yourself and all the cool people stayed anonymous.

Get elected, actually READ legislation before voting on it, actually WRITE legislation you submit, abstain from or vote no on anything where neither of the above are possible.

The "horse and buggy" model isn't just because of distance. It is because even the most well-informed voter cannot possibly have the time to comprehend every piece of legislation that comes up, so they vote for someone who generally aligns with their interests who's f'ing JOB it is to know how to analyze and vote accordingly WITHOUT a f'ing poll of the consituents, who honestly might as well be your cats. You risk voting "NO" on necessary, well thought legislation and "YES" on outright insanity at the whim of easily manipulated ignoramuses responding not to measured reason, but irrational frenzy.

This sort of crap is NOT being responsive to your constituents, it's being willfully lazy, actively incompetent and easily used.

Okay, now I know you're full of shit. I did computer programming for rather large multinationals in college and I have a social sciences degree, ffs. If you were going CS/EE with any level of actual skill at a school of the slightest repute, "Pizza Guy" is the job you'd get to pay for beer while on scholarship or trust fund (I'd even find it eyebrow-raising then), not what you'd get if you were actually paying for school as you went. Apart from only paying enough for living expenses, it would just be a bizzare move as you could get absolute crap IT work paying several times as much, with less stress (that sort of food service is fucking maddening and exhausting) even as dumb-college-kid-#5546778.

As for astroturf, it's perceived because your examples are rife with convenient stereotypes. Community college in precisely two years with precisely the transferable courses to your chosen university in precisely the right order with not a single failed wait-list? You know how I know you've never taken a single course at community college? Because that's NIGH FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE.

I actually might suspect you ARE a North Korean spy with the oh-so-humble "Pizza Guy" story and the glorious advantages of our wonderful COMMUNity colleges. It's a caricature that just doesn't add up.

Bullshit. I don't know what you are leaving out of this equation, but, ignoring the schedule conflicts of working full time and going to school full-time, an $8/hr job paying just FICA will net about $15k assuming ZERO income tax. Minimal rent (as in A ROOM) is about $6k/yr, FOOD STAMPS for one person are about $3k per year. Right there, you've got a whopping $500/month left For EVERYTHING else: transport, utilities, insurance, clothes, household supplies etc. Even most state schools ring in at about $9k/yr just in tuition, so you're already in the hole $2k and you haven't bought a single book or so much as washed a sock.

Unless you're riding on a pile of grant money or have free housing, food etc. ("without a penny from my parents" is a lie if they're housing and feeding you) -- your scenario just doesn't stand up to basic arithmetic.

Of course, then there's the obvious problem of attending 15-18 hours of classes scattered between 8am and 7pm M-F and somehow still finding the same contiguous 8-hr per day slot in which to fit "work" and to maintain your 4.0, at least another 30 hours for "study."

In short, you are full of shit. Either you made a LOT more than $8/hr, at a magical job with no set schedule to boot, paid NOTHING for housing and food, and/or were heavily subsidized by other means public or private, or you're just flatly lying.

Railroad to nowhere? Are you kidding? Do you realize the size of the economies and amount of existing commuter rail in LA and SFO? MetroLink in LA removes about 250 Million annual highway miles from the roads -- at a cost of about $0.28 per mile, oddly enough, less than the federal mileage deduction. In 20 years it has grown to 512 miles of track, about the same as from LA-SFO, but the vast majority is in heavily populated areas. Yes, the trackbeds were almost all already there (as, indeed they are or could be selected at least for this route), but damn near 100% of it has been replaced (and much of it doubled or quadrupled in parallel tracks from the existing freight lines) explicitly for increased Amtrak and Metrolink traffic. Flying between LA-SFO is a serious pain in the ass and at the end of it is not that much faster than driving. Sure, it's only 2-3 hours curb to curb (people have a silly tendency to not count the time milling around terminals, sitting on tarmacs etc. as if "flight time" is it). But, unless you live in El Segundo and are going to Burlingame, you only save maybe an hour flying from what it takes to drive door-to-door. I recall one trip where, having driven the exact same route less than a year prior, and despite living less than three miles from the airport with a destination fifty yards from a BART station, flying saved me a grand total of fifteen minutes over driving. You can't reasonably add any more flights between LA and SFO/OAK -- or hell, add a lane to I-5 -- without a comparatively huge infrastructure investment and the possibility of expanding surface traffic on either end is about nil. Given the timeframe involved, the fact that flight is for the foreseeable future pegged to the cost of kerosene, which ain't going DOWN in price, barring depopulation, something will have to be there that is economically scalable.

Yes, the budget and timeframe given the landscape of the route are both wildly eyebrow-raising, but the idea is hardly a "railroad to nowhere."

California is most definitely an at-will employment state.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab&group=02001-03000&file=2920-2929

Had one of these interviews awhile ago. I'm prone to getting spooked under interrogation. But, in an interview I conducted, I was able to recognize our candidate was both brilliant as hell and nervous to the point of babbling (Aspie galore). We hired him. He _is_ fucking brilliant, but sucks at interviews.

If your main goal is to weed people out by putting them in an unnatural setting for the purpose at hand then test their skills using tools totally removed from how they are actually performed, yes, you may find that one bright shining star who can do and teach, but you'll also write-off as fools legions of people who are gifted as hell but just don't function in that environment. Chances are, though, you'll get middling candidates who have just enough rote knowledge to pass your ten minute test, but would pale in comparison when the test takes weeks, months or years with all the proper tools and resources available.

Had a whiteboard Nazi been at the helm during the interview, we'd never have hired our best engineer.