A microphone has already been landed on Mars - unfortunately there was a risk of data corruption if the camera hardware it was attached to was turned on, so the microphone itself never got switched on...

It depends on your application space. If you're making a monitor to alert you when plants need to be watered, you're going to want to use a controller that can run on AA batteries for months, and costs a few dollars. That's not anything that Intel sells - that's more like an Arduino Atemel chip. So yes, compared to a high end CPU, a low end Intel CPU is cheap and low power, but compared to a $3 controller that can run on an AA battery for months, it's expensive and power hungry.

I travelled with a large external hard disk as well, once - which also got taken to one side and swabbed for stuff. Internal monologue: OH NO MY PRECIOUS DATA ... Oh, it's just the possibility of it being a bomb they're worried about.

On another occasion, I had fun with my home-made, Arduino-powered dSLR timelapse gadget - it got thoroughly inspected by the TSA. I'd already opted out of the backscatter X-ray whatsit, only for a swab-for-explosives test to give a (false-)positive. Eek. Cue being taken to one side, where they looked in my bag and found the timelapse-o-tron...

To give the screeners their due, they let me go after a few minutes - after I'd heard their complaints about the potential radiation doses they and the passengers were receiving from the backscatter X-ray thingers, and after I'd provided advice on what sort of camera to look into buying for a budding photographer.

Security fun elsewhere: carrying a plastic bag of loose change through the Eurostar security in Brussels (it basically looked like an amorphous, completely opaque lump on the X-ray) - and a random customs check at a UK airport giving a (false-)positive swab for some sort of illicit drugs. Eek.

There's an important difference that you're missing, in that the DMCA was passed in to law, and it completely changed the situation.

Before the DMCA the parties met in court as equals, and a judge (or jury) had to rule as to whether the claim of infringement was valid. Because this required effort to prove, and because courts really hate having their time wasted, this tended to prevent baseless claims from being made. And until the claim was proved to be valid, the site was unaffected.

The DMCA completely shifted the balance in favor of any claim of infringement. All claims of infringement are presumed to be valid, and that the ISP/Site must immediately take down anything claimed to be infringing (the "safe harbor"). And then, after the site is down, the burden is on the site to prove that the content is not infringing.

So looking at the Qualcomm / Github situation, before DMCA Qualcomm would have filed claims in court and Github would make the case against the claims, and the claims would have to be proven, with the repository owners able to defend themselves from the claims, before any repositories were taken down. That is, the burden of proof is on the person claiming infringement, and nothing happens until they make a case in court. And if the claims are baseless, all that happens is that Qualcomm wastes a bunch of money, and pisses off the court, and likely has to pay Github's expenses.

Under DMCA, Qualcomm files claims, Github has to immediately take the repositories down, and then each repo owner has to prove that their repo is not infringing to bring it back up. So Qualcomm has, without any proof at all, forced tons of repositories down, and even if they've done nothing wrong it could be months until they're back up, damaging those projects and wasting huge amounts of their time and money.

Those aren't the same.

Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution provides that "Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."

You're right that Congressmen can be arrested for breaking the law, by the police, as a part of a court case. But that's not the case here, we're talking about preventing a Congressman from flying. If a Congressman is traveling to or from Congress, or is flying as a course of Congressional business, they can't be interfered with by anyone other than the Congressional Sergeant at Arms. Unless you want to argue that the Congressman is guilty of "Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace" because they have the same name as someone anonymously placed on a list, with no accuser, no evidence, no trial and no means of challenging the list or even knowing that you're actually on it. That seems like a pretty weak legal argument.

Add in the constitutional issue that the executive branch is not allowed to interfere with the Congress' travel, so whatever idiot stopped a Congressman from flying should have ended up in jail. The branches aren't allowed to interfere with each other's ability to function, for the fairly obvious reason that otherwise the executive branch could arrest Congressmen to throw votes, could arrest judges who rule against them, etc. The branches need to police themselves - that's why Congress has a Sergeant at Arms.

Ironically related to "I understand that Bin-Laden should have probably been on some "no fly list"." keep in mind that the first thing that Bush did after 9/11 was covertly fly every member of the Bin Laden family out of the US to make sure that they couldn't be detained and questioned. Presumably because Saudis who control lots of oil are your golfing buddies, not "terrorists". Once you've ensured that the people who knew the mastermind behind the attacks best in the world couldn't be questioned, there's not much logic in stopping anyone else, much less stopping random people with the same names as people who were rumored to be terrorists. And since the people on the "no fly list" aren't accused of any crime, they can just leave the airport and then do whatever they like, only they're more pissed off. So I don't see how that would prevent any terrorism - I'd think that irritating suspected terrorists but not charging or arresting them would just encourage more terrorism..

And, of course, there's the "separation of powers" thing. The TSA is under the executive branch, so they can't really do anything to judges - the judicial branch has to police itself. For pretty much the same reason that the executive branch can't do anything to Congress - the police are constitutionally not allowed to arrest a congressman, because if they could, then the executive branch could (legally) take over the government by physically arresting Congress to prevent votes, etc.

You can make a better "gun" than the Liberator using a piece of wood and a drill, faster and cheaper than a 3D print. The US doesn't suffer from a shortage of guns or the ability to make guns.

The only reason to 3D print a gun is because you really like guns and want to use 3D printing to get some press.

Sure, there would be regular supply schedules. But that means that the part arrives weeks or months after it's ordered. Which means either maintaining a large inventory of spares before they're needed, or waiting weeks or months while equipment is out of commission.

With an SLS printer, they could have the part in a few hours. So if the value of time is high, it's worth the cost of the SLS part.

You're right that SLS printers are slow and expensive, but they're still faster than physically shipping parts (hours vs. days), and if the value of time is high then it's worth using an expensive process to get the part faster. And it lets the unit be more self-sufficient, which is valuable when traditional shipping breaks down - many wars have been lost over control over supply lines.

And an SLS printer and metal powder is much simpler to warehouse and keep supplied than a complete inventory of all needed metal parts. I suspect that the complete supply chain optimization is pretty impressive when you add it all up. Mass production is very efficient, but add in massive manufacturer markup, then all of the wearhousing, shipping, security, inventory, etc., logistics to manage and move everything around, and "print in the field on demand" is probably pretty appealing.

I'd bet that the the only thing holding it up would be negotiations with manufacturers - I'm sure that the manufacturers will want to get paid tons of money even if all they're doing is licensing the design files (i.e. not actually making or shipping anything). So the $500 specialized wrench would continue to cost $500.

But if the army guys had SLS printers in the field, how rapidly do you think they'd model their own parts that are better than the ones from the vendor? Those guys are quite ingenious at making things work with whatever they have available, and with an SLS printer, they sky's the limit!

There are lots of people doing casting from 3D prints. You can 3D print the master in PLA, then make a plaster cast, burn out the PLA, and pour in metal. For example, http://3dtopo.com/lostPLA/ . It works, it's just more dangerous and complex than most people want to deal with.

Not just 'tried to', but actually delivered. Thinking Machines CM-1 and CM-2 had routers on chip with 32 CPUs per chip. In the hybercube architecture, the 5 lowest bits of CPU address routed on-chip, and the rest of the CPU address routed between chips. It worked quite well, and was the fastest computer on the planet for several years running.

+1, Interesting.

(Thanks!)

I guess "fully steerable" means "within ~20 of zenith" to you. But that's not what the rest of the world considers "fully steerable".

Oops. That was in reference to his Green Bank Telescope link - Arecibo being only partially steerable...