> The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.

A 3D printer in a retail setting, where it's kept fairly busy, will use a few thousand dollars worth of filament and electricity every month. A retail location needs to charge the same amount again to cover labor costs (a $9.50 employee costs $20/hour with taxes, healthcare, workers comp, etc.) Then roughly the same amount again for rent of the floor space, signage, permits, roi, etc. So the store needs to sell about $10,000 in prints per month for the machine to earn it's keep.

Whether the printer cost $5000 or $3000 to purchase has very little impact on the final cost to the consumer.

> As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down

"Economies of scale" refers to the various reasons that it's cheaper to do something 10,000 times, assembly line fashion, rather than one piece at a time. In other words, the exact OPPOSITE of what's being talked about here.

It may be useful where , due to the inefficiency of handling an order for one 20 cent knob, the manufacturer doesn't sell parts directly to consumers. The knob that costs 20 cents at scale (on Alibaba) will cost $5 to print. Alibaba operates at scale, and though. 3D printing is for when you're willing to give up economy (pay more per unit) because you're NOT operating at scale.

Advancements in 3D printing technology and competition should reduce costs somewhat. However, costs have already fallen by an order of magnitude or more. It's likely that they cannot be reduced another order of magnitude. The one economy of scale available is keeping the printing machines busy to amortize their cost across many prints, but Shapeway's printers are already busy. Now we can only save shipping costs by having a local machine busy.

They could be thinking of microwave energy. Of course that means they need a 10Km rectenna on the plane, which would be problematic to put it mildly. From their web site, there's no way to tell what they're thinking, or if they're thinking.

That's a valid point, of course. Perhaps I should have been more specific and said the concept of a long- endurance vehicle being nuclear powered has been proven, but keeping the nuclear power source aloft for years is another question.

Power for long-range airplanes is a tricky thing. More endurance requires more fuel, but that additional fuel is more weight, which increases fuel consumption. Many options would be counterproductive, weighing more than can be kept aloft by the energy they provide or store. I suspect that only nuclear fuel and a hot-air envelope can provide enough energy to keep themselves aloft for years.

My employer wants me to go to a conference in Vegas, DevLearn. Since it's something they want, they are paying.
I wanted to ho to a local conference on information security. Since it's something I wanted, I was willing to pay. My employer paid anyway because the bureaucracy says they should pay for one conference per year or whatever, but I have no problem paying for something I want to do for my own benefit.

If my employer wants me to fo it for their benefit, it's reasonable for them to pay for it.

I also decided to go back to school. I wanted to do that for myself, so I'm paying for it. My employer also gets some benefit, so they are paying part of it. Having an educated workforce paying more taxes helps the whole country, so the federal government is paying a small part via Pell grants. But mostly, it's something I want to do, for my own reasons, so I pay for it.

On their web site, I see a lot about what they wish they could do, and very little about how they'd manage to do it.
They say their HA series is designed to stay aloft for up to five years at "all latitudes". "All latitudes precludes the use of solar power since it's dark for six months at a time at far north and far south latitudes, and most of their pictures clearly show no solar panels. So are they hoping for a magic battery that will last five years but not weigh hundreds of pounds, or are they planning on nuclear power? Submarines that stay out for years use nuclear power, so that is a proven option.

Another option that's known to be somewhat workable at some latitudes is a hot air balloon, where the black balloon continually absorbs heat from the sun to keep the craft aloft. Their pictures show model planes, though, not balloons.

Do these guys have any idea how to solve the most fundamental physics problems in the way, or do they just have a wish and nothing else? Their web site doesn't seem to indicate they've thought about how to do it, just how to get people to hand over cash, with no actual plan published.

For those who don't quite understand that "worthy of Monty Python " implies something ridiculous, so improbable as to be almost beyond imagination, let mw get serious for a moment.

They will not collide because the only time they will be "near" each other they'll be at very different altitudes from the Martian surface. One will be 10,000 meters above the surface while the other is 33,000 feet above. Veteran scientists who worked on the Mars climate orbiter have confirmed this is plenty of separation between the two.

Not EVERYTHING the government does us a total failure, of course.
They do tend to fail in comic ways, and often spectacularly. Mars climate orbiter, anyone? Robin Williams did a great bit about that.

Do you REALLY want to argue the position that governments aren't prone to ridiculous screwups? You can point to a couple of projects that ended up working. On the other side are thousands of projects and trillions of dollars that all ended in utter fail. The entire Bush II administration- mostly fail. His successor- again mostly fail, as evidenced by his approval ratings in the 30%s.

Also, you might want to check out Monty Python sometime.
The feared killer rabbit is a favorite. Encountering a killer rabbit, and being forced to defend yourself with the Holy Hand Grenade, is approximately as likely as said collision. Hence the Monty Python reference. Yet governments do indeed fight "holy wars", presumably with holy hand grenades, because nothing is too ridiculous for a government.

The point went right over your head, didn't it. The odds of that happening are astronomical, literally. Yet, it wouldn't be all that surprising if a government agency still managed to screw it up, against all odds - to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

For somw reason, it wouldn't surprise me if these two craft collided, despite being the only two approaching the entire planet. It just seems that any time a government spends a lot of money to do anything, it normally ends with a fail worthy of Monty Python .

Oilcan completely see how a security agent can open the lock by merely passing their forearm near the card reader as they approach the door. Wear the security card on the forearm, hip, or other appropriate place and even a relatively inexpensive reader such as many office buildings use will allow instant access by authorized personnel, while keeping unauthorized people out.

Absolutely there's no such thing as perfect security. I say that as a security professional. My wife, a childcare professional, will tell you that locking the front door is a good idea, if the house is a target. They spend a billion and half dollars every year on the secret service, who doesn't bother to lock the door. That's how government does things.

The Obama administration chose to publish the ten-year cost number, because that makes them look better than any other choice. Too short and the startup costs aren't amortized much, too long and you get into the time period where we're scheduled to actually pay for much of it. Those 12 million people wil need insurance for the next ten years, so it's perfectly appropriate to talk about what it will cost to cover them for ten years. 12 million isn't a one-time number, as if they only needed coverage for one day. The number of previously uninsured people may covered may fluctuate a bit, but not by order of magnitude or anything like that.

No, that's not a mistake I made. I made a much simpler mistake, though - I lost track of the number of zeros ehile trying to calculate trillions in my head.

This is, I think, the key line in TFA:

> A Family Court official ruled that Noel Biscocho could use Facebook to serve Anna Maria Antigua because other, more traditional methods to slap her with papers have not worked.

Historically, when the defendant absolutely cannot be reached any other way, the service of last resort was to put a classified ad in the "legal notices" section of the newspaper. In order for a judge to accept that, you had to show that you didn't know where the person lived or worked, and had no reasonable means of finding out. It seems to me that in case like this, delivery via the person's _active_ Facebook account is much better than a classified ad,and may well be the best available method of reaching the person.