Google glass and Oculus Rift are in completely different spaces. One is Augment Reality and the other is Virtual Reality. One is for overlaying outside reality and the other is for replacing at least visual outer reality with other content. One is for augmented interaction with in commonly perceived visual world the other for deep immersion in a virtual world/worldview.

It is pretty sloppy thinking to consider them competitors.

I bought a Velleman K8200 ($750) essentially on "impulse", as
I have access to a StrataSys 3D printer at work and so it might
seem "redundant".

Guess what? I LOVE IT! Sure, there is no reason why I couldn't
make this or that by hand-carving it out of a solid block of acrylic,
or wait till Monday morning to run the parts on the StrataSys at work,
but now I can drop into OpenSCAD (or my wife can drop into Blender),
design the thing, hit "print", and then cook dinner while the machine
does the drudge work. A few minutes of hand clean-up later (mostly
reaming holes if we want snug fits) and the part is done- or more
likely, we decide we want to change it. Some parts go through
three or four iterations before we decide it's perfect. That's the
seductive part of 3D printing - the cost of a prototype approaches
zero.

I'm probably $1200 into this by now (filament goes typically for
$40 a kilogram, and some of the stuff like the extrudable rubber
and the water-clear, FDA-approved PET is almost twice that), but
darn it, this is fun!

Sure, you can spend a lot of bucks on the toolchain but you
absolutely don't have to spend anything at all. (Solidworks $8000?
Got it at work. Don't need it; OpenSCAD and Blender and FreeCAD
are adequate for me, and free for the download).

Yeah, my wife has dreams of making gee-gaws and knick-nacks to
sell at her conventions, but I'm happy to spin out replacement ladders
for my son's toy fire engine and custom rail crossings for his railroad, and
"companion cubes" and little unicorns for my daughters.... as well
as the occasional screen door handle, refrigerator shelf holder,
cellphone mount, consumer electronics case / case replacement,
etc.

Note- there's no "driver issue" - with rare exception, all cheap
3D printers all talk G-code via RS-232 or USB-TTY at 250,000
baud (yeah, nonstandard baud rate because most 3D printers are
based on Arduino cores, and that's one baud rate that has essentially
zero error due to CPU clock speed). The printer control "front panel"
is a big Python script (several options are there; Repetier-host and
Pronterface both are nice); the slicer that turns STL models into
G-code is open-source (I use Slic3r at home and Cura at work).

It's a big, big win. Really. I can sit down with one of my kids and
make something they want and have the printer spit it out while
we read a book or watch a show. Maybe every home doesn't
need one, but I'd rate it right next to "belt sander" in the home arsenal.

You weren't at the last PAX Prime, nor will you be at the upcoming PAX East. Any story behind that?

"My Blackberry Q10 has a removable battery, and it reboots itself whenever I set it down on a desk too hard. Most or all smartphones with removable batteries that I've used in the past did the same thing."

"Weird. Every phone I've ever owned has a removable battery. Not one has ever done this, even when accidentally I drop them on the floor. How hard are you slamming them down?"

ANECDOTE FIGHT!

There is a lot of very cool tech in and that can be built around a Kinect.

It is not your business what a company chooses to pay anyone in the company. Not remotely. You are not the salary decision maker so go waste your time some other way.

I consider it immoral to limit the visual spectrum capacity and memory (recording) of visual input of cyborg passengers in any way. No, I do not consider this a humorous position although it is certainly and unfortunately not common yet.

So, no one elected has any authority over this powerful agency? Is that what is being claimed? Then we have a problem, no?

"This has *everything* to do with the jackass owner trying to ensure that nobody can take their own pictures, because I guarantee he's got a photographer onboard who's taking "professional" pictures which are sold at ludicrous prices. Have you *been* to a themepark?"

Think that through for a second. Any technology in place to affect client's cameras will also affect the hired photographer's cameras.

Thank you.

Also, even if you ignore the deceptiveness of the formatting of the original list, and while I appreciate that they cited the source, I really wish it wasn't from a website whose sub-headline is "Conservative Policy Research and Analysis."

Glass doesn't have an internet connection or GPS chip of its own. I would assume it disappeared from the 'net as soon as she and her phone moved out of bluetooth range.

For fuck's sake guys, there was so much more interesting information in that report and you went for the linkbait-iest piece of crap on the list. Have some fucking self respect. Check your sources. Be a goddamned editor. The rest of you: follow the link to the .pdf and read at least the Highlights of the report. It's fascinating.

This is far far beyond what we should just bear. Take the fucking government apart until they stop this behavior. Enough is enough.

Cybersecurity is a joke as long as NSA and other government agencies are poking access, surveillance and disruption holes in everything that they can. There will be much hype about cybersecurity to "protect" us as a guise to control, subvert and shutdown at will as much actual "computer power to the people" as possible. Be aware and do not play into this.

Why do we need such powerful military grade drones just to keep tabs on illegal aliens crossing our borders? A bunch of cheap quadcopters with infrared and other cameras could do the job.